The Right Stuff by Montecito Journal

MJ WRITING CONTEST

23 - 30 April 2020 Vol 26 Issue 17

SERVING MONTECITO AND SUMMERLAND

Quarantine getting you down? Enter our short story contest and win prizes, details p. 28

Earth Day 2020

Former Santa Barbara Mayor Hal Conklin remembers Earth Day as it happened 50 years ago, p. 12

Village Beat

93108Fund seeking donations in order to continue supporting Montecito’s hourly workers, p. 8

THE RIGHT STUFF SANTA BARBARA’S KATE FARMS IS CHANGING LIVES WITH PLANT-BASED NUTRITION (STORY BEGINS ON PAGE 14)

Finding a New Normal

Acme Hospitality’s Sherry Villanueva navigates the closure of her 12 establishments during the coronavirus crisis, p. 24

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE 5 Editorial It takes a village to save a village. It also takes a plan. Laughing Matters 6 Montecito Miscellany Santa Barbara charity The Unity Shoppe struggles; Tonia Shimin publishes a book on her artist father, the late Symeon Shimin; Julia Louis-Dreyfus on her next, post-cancer, chapter; remembering Peter Beard, acclaimed photographer and friend; and more 8 Village Beat The 93108Fund distributes sorely needed cash and Casa Dorinda practices social distancing while our county tries to come up with a plan 10 Letters Readers have a thing or two to say about masks, plus Jack’s Weekly Forecast Tide Guide 11 Spirituality Matters The annual NVC Convention offers nonviolent communication techniques for those stuck at home 12 Earth Day at 50 Hal Conklin, former mayor of Santa Barbara, looks back on a homegrown holiday 14 The Right Stuff How Santa Barbara’s Kate Farms created the world’s first medically-insured, plant-based nutritional shake 15 On Entertainment Local sisters sing on Saturdays, plus more virtual entertainment for your Zooming pleasure 18 On the Record Montecito Journal hosted a Zoom call and economic recovery brainstorming session with 100 local politicians and business owners 22 Surfing the Curve A conversation with Cottage Hospital’s Dr. Lynn Fitzgibbons, an expert on infectious diseases 23 Brilliant Thoughts Remembering a life in postcards 24 Flying Down the Highway to a New Normal How Sherry Villanueva and the restaurant workers of Acme Hospitality set up a Santa Barbara food bank 26 Perspectives The second in a four-part series arguing for the need of a new federalism in American politics The Optimist Daily 30 Sheltering in Place Do books really make the best pedestals for candles? Les Firestein answers this and other quarantine-era home decorating questions 32 People of Montecito Meet Justine Hamilton 34 Real Estate A closer look at five local properties that closed escrow not a second too soon 35 Village People Meet Tommy Delgado and Hunter Self of J&S East Valley Garage 40 Quarantine Break A photographic look at how Montecito residents are staying sane outdoors 41 Our Town The United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County unveils its new project, Lend a Socially Distant Hand 46 Classified Advertising Our own “Craigslist” of classified ads, in which sellers offer everything from summer rentals to estate sales 47 Local Business Directory Smart business owners place business cards here so readers know where to look when they need what those businesses offer

“The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.” – Florence Nightingale

23 – 30 April 2020

Editorial by Gwyn Lurie

It Takes a Village to Save a Village

Montecito Journal hosted a Zoom meeting for members of the Montecito business community to brainstorm ideas to support local business during this time

The world is going LOCAL. Or at least it should be. Every day we have more proof that food, information, energy infrastructure, and leadership have the most integrity and the most power to do good when they have the least distance to travel. When it’s locally sourced. Distance dissipates. It is a fact of life. How communities rise to this moment will make all the difference in determining who and what is left standing when we come out of this mess. And by who and what I mean the whole shebang – individuals, businesses, our customs, and our ways of life. As members of our local press we feel a profound responsibility not only to keep our community well informed, but to link arms with every other stakeholder in this disaster to ensure that our community emerges from this moment poised for success. It’s easy to take for granted our strolls down Coast Village Road and Montecito’s Upper Village shopping areas; popping in and out of our charming shops and eating in our delicious restaurants. Just as it is easy to take for granted the majesty of our natural environment – our beaches, our mountains, our vistas, our streams. But here’s the painful truth: if we don’t step up and support our local businesses, we won’t have local businesses. It’s all too easy to forget that connection when we’re busy 1-click ordering. But the nice way we feel when we walk into those lovingly curated, unique stores and restaurants will be merely a memory, and what we’ll be left with is online shopping and chain stores and restaurants with deep corporate pockets and headquarters far away. Let’s not even go there.

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The Short Term is a Long Time When your Head is Underwater

Unfortunately, so many “non-essential” businesses have had to go from 65 to zero in seconds flat. Jamming on the brakes is hard on us and our cars and those same G forces wreak havoc on our businesses too. But at least our cars have airbags.

EDITORIAL Page 284

23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

Monte ito Miscellany by Richard Mineards

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 13 years ago.

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anta Barbara charity The Unity Shoppe is undergoing one of the most devastating chapters in its 100-year history. The number of people requiring help during the coronavirus pandemic has tripled to more than 3,500 families of four who need food services twice a month, compared to 1,000 families normally. “It used to be people living paycheck to paycheck, but they are now struggling to live paycheck to no paycheck because of all the layoffs,” says executive director Tom Reed, who says Unity Shoppe’s whole operation has been completely shifted to focus on food during the crisis. “Donors are freaked out by the economy so financial contributions plummet as the demand has skyrock-

Unity Shoppe executive director Tom Reed

eted. Purchasing food in bulk like we do speeds up the process. “Moreover, low-income families with children are home all day without the benefit of breakfast, lunch, and snacks provided to their K-12th graders while at school.” [SB Unified is providing grab-and-go breakfast and lunches] Tom expects this to continue through March, 2021, with an increase in

MISCELLANY Page 324

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The property information herein is derived from various sources that may include, but not be limited to, county records and the Multiple Listing Service, and it may include approximations. Although the information is believed to be accurate, it is not warranted and you should not rely upon it without personal verification. Real estate agents affiliated with Coldwell Banker Realty are independent contractor sales associates, not employees. ©2020 Coldwell Banker. All Rights Reserved. Coldwell Banker and the Coldwell Banker logos are trademarks of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. The Coldwell Banker® System is comprised of company owned offices which are owned by a subsidiary of Realogy Brokerage Group LLC and franchised offices which are independently owned and operated. The Coldwell Banker System fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act.

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“If I can’t be a soldier, I’ll help soldiers.” – Clara Barton

23 – 30 April 2020

With COVID-19 at our doorstep, Montecito’s community resilience matters. Check merrag.org/calendar before coming to any of our scheduled trainings. Check merrag.org/covid for a host of useful sources.

The MERRAG team. provides readiness Building a resilient and MERRAG awareness and training, self-reliant community. neighborhood This past week MERRAG partnered with the Montecito Association to deliver homemade masks to residents throughout the community. 23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

radio communications, and timely, accurate official information as a reliable community ally.

MONTECITO JOURNAL

Village Beat by Kelly Mahan Herrick

Kelly has been editor at large for the Journal since 2007, reporting on news in Montecito and beyond. She is also a licensed realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, and is a member of Montecito and Santa Barbara’s top real estate team, Calcagno & Hamilton.

93108Fund Distributes Needed Cash

nonprofit that was started after the 2018 debris flow is getting much-needed cash into the hands of desperate hourly workers in Montecito quickly and efficiently, so that workers who have lost their jobs can pay for basic necessities like food, diapers, and medicine. The 93108Fund has given away $52,000 to 520 hourly workers who have either lost their jobs, been furloughed, or had their hours cut significantly since the stay-at-home order was issued in March. For now, each hourly worker receives $100 cash, but organizers plan to give away greater amounts as they raise more money. A total of 879 people have applied for the grant. “We are trying to make the process as speedy and efficient as possible,” said Montecito resident Ron Blitzer, who started the 93108Fund after the debris flow in January 2018, and re-started it late last month after

the COVID-19 stay-at-home order closed many businesses in the upper and lower villages of Montecito. “As fast as the dollars are coming, we are getting them out the door to the workers.” Blitzer noted that the online application is very simple and that the first round of cash payments were in the hands of workers within four days of the project starting. “It’s critical that we get money into these workers hands fast,” he said. “But to do that, we need to raise more money as soon as possible.” The 93108Fund hopes to raise $600,000 in the coming days and weeks so that the approximately 1,200 hourly workers in Montecito who have lost their jobs can receive up to $500 each. One hundred percent of the funds raised will go directly to the workers. So far, a little over $91,000 has been raised. If you are interested in making a donation to the fund, checks can be

GOT FRUIT?

YOUR BACKYARD CAN HELP FEED HUNGRY FAMILIES IN SANTA BARBARA Please HELP by Donating your extra Fruit! It’s fun and feels great to contribute. Self-curbside drop-off to the Unity Shoppe is, M-F 10- 5:00 pm Located at 110 Sola Street in S.B. OR, WE WILL PROVIDE THE PICK UP & DELIVERY To the Unity Shoppe Food Bank when your produce is bagged or boxed. ARRANGE A PICK UP BY EMAILING US AT davisofficelasb@gmail.com

The Montecito Firefighters Charitable Foundation gave the 93108Fund a grant of $5,000 as well as a matching grant of $10,000 to help support Montecito hourly workers

sent to: 93108Fund, c/o American Riviera Bank, 525 San Ysidro Road, Montecito, CA, 93108. The 93108Fund. org website also has a link to a PayPal site for donations. All donations are tax-deductible. Already, two community partners have stepped forward with matching grants: the Montecito Firefighters’ Charitable Foundation, with a $5,000 cash grant and a $10,000 matching grant; and the Kirby Jones Foundation, with a $15,000 matching grant. Volunteers are either hand-delivering the debit cards to workers, or workers can come to Jeannine’s Restaurant & Bakery, 1253 Coast Village Road, to pick them up, from 9 am to 1 pm, Monday through Friday. “Workers are very stressed and anxious right now because they can’t work, and most workers haven’t gotten an unemployment check yet from the government. These workers don’t know how they are going to feed their families or pay their rent,” said Alison Hardey, owner of Jeannine’s, who is also a volunteer for the nonprofit. “People are telling me, ‘this is all I’ve got.’” Those workers who would like to receive a cash grant should go to 93108Fund.org to apply. Volunteers from the 93108Fund then call the employers to verify the worker was employed before the stay-at-home order closed down restaurants, shops, and offices. To qualify, workers must have been employed in the 93108 zip code area. Applicants are asked to submit a short sentence as to why they need the grant, and the answers are

MONTECITO JOURNAL

VILLAGE BEAT Page 234

Marriage + Relationship Repair and Recovery

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COUPLES & MARRIAGE

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Let’s all make a Difference, GOD BLESS

heartbreaking, according to volunteer Julia Rodgers. “I am completely out of work and haven’t heard anything from unemployment yet. I am a single mom… I am fearful for the future,” said one applicant. “My wife and I are expecting our first child. This has been a very stressful time because we don’t know how long this is going to last,” said another applicant. “A common theme among the workers is that they have tried to find work elsewhere, but they have had no luck,” Rodgers said. “These hourly workers – whether they be waiters, dishwashers, office workers, or retail clerks – provide important services to our community during normal times, and we want them to know that we appreciate and support them during this crisis,” said Blitzer. After the debris flow in Montecito in 2018, Blitzer quickly established the 93108Fund and within a month starting distributing up to $250 in cash to hourly wage earners. In total, the Fund delivered checks to over 950 hourly wage earners in need. When the stay-at-home order was issued last month and restaurants, shops, and offices in Montecito were ordered to close, Blitzer and his volunteers decided it was time to get back to work. “Due to the emergence of COVID-19 and the anticipated needs of our community’s hourly workers, we decided to reignite our fundraising and marketing efforts to assist, once again, the at-risk workers in Montecito,” said

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23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

LETTERS

TO THE EDITOR

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

Powers that Be

ust read Jim Buckley’s letter “Uglification of Montecito” and I definitely agree with his comment on the ruination of our beautiful community other than his placing some concern with the Montecito Association. The County and City ‘powers that be’ have control, I understand. Jean Von Wittenburg

Restarting Santa Barbara

Today I went to Home Improvement again, stood in a long line limiting entry, with customers, mostly wearing masks, each carefully separated six feet apart by marks on the sidewalk. At Trader Joe’s, another popular place, customers in line with six foot separations, waiting for their turn to enter. Costco has reconfigured their parking lot to separate people as they arrive and lines on the floor inside separate customers waiting to check out. At Vons shelves are now pretty well stocked but a sign in front says you cannot enter unless you have a face covering, and again checkout lines separate customers checking out. I would think almost every store in Santa Barbara could reopen if they followed these simple directions – customers entering wearing masks, the number of customers at any one time is limited, and again checkout lines separate customers checking out. This would at least start the process of getting the economy open and putting people back to work who are very badly in need of a paycheck. Perhaps even restaurants with outdoor tables could allow customers to eat their take out foods at those tables with proper separation. It would be nice to eat fresh hot food again instead of

lukewarm or warmed over food taken elsewhere. Calvin Marble

It’s the County’s Turn!

While I don’t want to be the dark cloud in what is turning into a lovely SB week, can we begin talking some hard truth? Individually, we need to focus on our health and risk-factors but, collectively, we need to channel our inner Howard Beale and rage against the idea that there is a silver-lining to COVID 19 or that this should become our “new normal.” Allow me to explain. UCSB’s Economic Forecast Project just came forth with devastating news for our private sector County economy. Historically, SB’s unemployment rate has been 4%. Well, unfortunately, things are about to get much worse – 30% of corona-closed restaurants may never reopen and hotel occupancy rates are down 85%. Between hospitality and retail we will likely lose 18,000 jobs (41,000 across all industries), leading to a 39% unemployment rate for these sectors alone. As our local economy plummets and our Political Monarchy (i.e. Board of Supervisors) talk enforcement rather than “end game,” my question is simple: What is SB County doing to tighten its own belt? Remember, our $1.1B County employs 4,300 people and has 26 different departments/agencies. It spends more than 99% of all revenue on – you guessed it – itself! They have yet to openly address the huge fallout from the loss of more than $7B in taxable restaurant, wine, and retail sales; not to mention, non-existent transit occupancy and hotel property taxes (deferred). Bottom-line: It is time to have a DISCUSSION (two-way!) about

what the County intends to do as they blindly follow (we are not SF!) the State’s general distancing guidelines that specifically state: “localism is determinative.” Of course, in a County known for obfuscation the questions are easy but the answers well, not so much: How large is our General Fund? Solvang is laying-off workers/losing $500k each month in taxes, how much is SB losing? What will we be using our reserves for – Unfunded pensions (yes, the market is a tad down)? COLA increases? County electric cars (hybrids are not good enough)? Pet projects (e.g., our insanely over budget $111M North County Jail, etc.)? Oh, and by the way, the $6M or so in annual Cannabis Cultivation taxes (not including expenses) will not save our $1.1B county during this respiratory pandemic. Does our Supervisor-controlled CEO (yes, we have one) Mona Miyasato even own a calculator? If, together, we can begin getting involved perhaps there is a silver-corona-lining. I don’t just mean helping each other during these unprecedented times, I also mean asking the hard questions. We can no longer accept jackboot press conferences and heads in the sand. We have done our part – time for the Board of Supervisors and City pols to do theirs. Ask the questions, send an email, stay vigilant, and please be healthy! Jeff Giordano SB County Resident

Hi, Supervisor Williams

Today at the State Street market there was a surprising (to me) number of people strolling through the market with no masks. I politely asked several of them why and got answers like “I forgot,” “it’s in the car,” “I feel fine,” “I don’t want to,” and my favorite, “it’s my right.” I explained that my mask was to protect him, not me, and questioned his right potentially to infect a 70-yearold with an often fatal disease. I asked him to think about it. I very much want the markets to remain open, for many reasons

economic and social, but I hope the Supervisors act quickly to rule that vendors in the farmers’ markets must refuse customers who are not masked. Thank you Cotty Chubb Montecito

City Pays Itself Well

What Will It Take? (MJ issue 16 headline asks:) Will City Leaders Rise to the Occasion? It would seem our City leaders are more than well compensated to do just that. Please consider their salaries according to transparentcalifornia.org: The City of Santa Barbara, total annual pay and benefits: City Administrator – $379,428.52 City Attorney – $346,609.81 Assistant City Administrator – $310,585.62 Community Development Director – $282,465.79 Airport Director – $237,347.56 Interim Finance Director – $192,793.71 Library Director – $255,622.64 Parks and Recreation Director – $270,371.74 Public Works Director – $307,759.02 Waterfront Director – $208,688.94 Governor of California – $201,680.00 Peter Hunt Santa Barbara. •MJ

Jack’s Weekly Forecast by Jack Martin

All of March and the first half of April has brought us back to normal rainfall for the season. Lake Cachuma is a beautiful sight to see at 80% full. Now it appears that the rainy season is over and summer is taking over. Are you ready for a heatwave? Ready or not it has arrived. The heatwave will continue into the weekend and next week. Expect highs to be 85F to 95F degrees through the weekend. No, that’s not a typo. Break out the sunscreen and enjoy.. •MJ

Montecito Tide Guide Day Low Hgt High Thurs, April 23 4:40 AM 0 10:51 AM Fri, April 24 5:13 AM -0.1 11:29 AM Sat, April 25 5:50 AM -0.1 12:12 PM Sun, April 26 6:32 AM -0.1 1:06 PM Mon, April 27 7:23 AM 0.1 2:23 PM Tues, April 28 12:29 AM Wed, April 29 1:24 AM Thurs, April 30 2:48 AM Fri, May 1 4:28 AM

10 MONTECITO JOURNAL

Hgt Low 3.9 4:16 PM 3.7 4:37 PM 3.4 4:59 PM 3.1 5:21 PM 2.8 5:43 PM 4.9 8:28 AM 4.6 9:45 AM 4.4 10:59 AM 4.3 11:58 AM

“They may forget your name but they will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

Hgt High Hgt Low Hgt 1.2 10:28 PM 5.3 1.7 10:53 PM 5.3 2 11:19 PM 5.2 2.3 11:50 PM 5.1 2.7 0.2 0.2 6:12 PM 3.1 8:23 PM 3.2 0.1 6:40 PM 3.5 10:53 PM 3 -0.1 7:06 PM 3.9

23 – 30 April 2020

Spirituality Matters by Steven Libowitz “Spirituality Matters” highlights two or three Santa Barbara area spiritual gatherings. Unusual themes and events with that something extra, especially newer ones looking for a boost in attendance, receive special attention. For consideration for inclusion in this column, email slibowitz@yahoo.com.

Annual NVC Convention Teaches Nonviolent Communication Techniques to Cope During the COVID Crisis What do communication techniques have to do with spirituality? Perhaps only everything we encounter on the human plane, as Nonviolent Communication, aka NVC, according to some, goes far beyond self-help communication skills to serve as a consciousness based on the intention to create positive connections. The core idea is that rather than be motivated by fear, guilt, or any coercion, people will give freely and happily when they feel good about each other and trust that their needs matter to the other person. Through NVC, people can learn to uncover their own deeper needs and those of others through its emphasis on deep listening – to ourselves as well as others – and thereby help us discover the depth of our own compassion. The concept comes from the awareness that all human beings are only trying to honor universal values and needs at all times, which is why NVC can be seen as both a spiritual practice that helps us see our common humanity, using our power in a way that honors everyone’s needs, and a concrete set of skills which help us create life-serving families and communities. Santa Barbara – which used to host Marshall Rosenberg, who founded NVC back in the 1960s and taught the principles locally himself in several visits to Santa Barbara through SBCC’s Adult Ed program – has been fortunate to host the annual Nonviolent Communication Conference in town for most of the 13 years since its creation by Rodger Sorrow, an experienced practitioner who teaches regularly at SBCC’s School for Extended Learning, the latest version of Adult Ed. Of course, Sorrow was forced to cancel this year’s annual in-person gathering, slated for this weekend, April 24-26, due to stay-at-home orders in the wake of COVID19. But moving the three-day event over to Zoom proved far less unwieldy than it might have been for other major events, who have found the translation tricky at best. That’s because the event will be hosted online this year by the NVC Academy, the online classroom for teaching and learning NVC concepts that has been around for more than a decade. The Academy was co-founded by Mary Mackenzie in 2006, only half a dozen years after she first encountered NVC. “That first class was profound,” Mackenzie recalled over the phone earlier this week. “The things I learned about myself helped me to better understand myself and my motivations for my words and actions, and to be able to shift my habits. Now it’s still enormous in my life. NVC has a huge major profound impact on everything I say or do. It’s an underlying theme throughout my entire life.” Mackenzie said the practice of NVC actually enhances her own spiritual practices. “It’s helped all of those beliefs and processes to be beautifully accentuated. It brings a needs connection to everything, and the minute you clarify what needs are met by the actions you are seeking, they become accentuated and brightened. So NVC runs through all parts of my life.” It was the desire to broaden the reach of the practice that led her and co-founder Mark Schultz to create the NVC Academy to alleviate the financial and geographical barriers to learning the skills, which at the time were available only in person. The Academy has become one of the primary training grounds for both practitioners and other trainers of NVC, so migrating the annual Santa Barbara conference online to Zoom was little more than a no-brainer. “We were able to pull it together very fast, and already have 290 people registered,” Mackenzie said. Obviously the connections created by meeting in person at the annual convention will be missed, but the Zoom platform has some benefits, too, it turns out. The meat of the weekend’s activities are the five breakout sessions, each offering a choice of four different classes. Online, rather than having to run between rooms to sample the sessions, participants will be able to freely jump between them as desired without even having to get up out of their chairs. Even better, lifetime access to recordings of every session will be made available after the conference so participants can let go of FOMO – the dreaded “fear of missing out.” Meanwhile, due to the fact that no travel is necessary, all of the eight trainers for this year’s conference are fully NVC-certified, each with a vast amount of

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SPIRITUALITY Page 374 23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

EARTH DAY 50 by Hal Conklin Hal Conklin is the former Mayor of Santa Barbara. He was the first Co-Director of the Community Environmental Council following the first Earth Day in 1970. He is currently the President of USA Green Communities and the President of the Santa Barbara Leadership Team.

Looking Back / Looking Forward

anta Barbara is often referred to as the “birthplace of the Environmental Movement.” It is true that back on April 22, 1970, Santa Barbara had become a key catalyst for the first Earth Day, having galvanized public outrage a year earlier when it experienced the worst oil spill in U.S. history on January 28, 1969. That environmental disaster led to a movement spearheaded by Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, who sought to awaken the nation to the assault on the environment that he predicted would undermine not only our economy, but ultimately the ability of the earth to compensate for the sins of greed that were grinding away at every corner of our civilization. Nelson persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Oiled children from the infamous 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill Congressman from California, to join him as a national co-chair of the first Earth Day. They then recruited Denis Hayes, a 25-year-old Harvard student, to organize a national event that ultimately resulted in 20,000,000 people joining the movement across the country. The infamous Santa Barbara Oil Spill that had occurred a year earlier wasn’t the only thing that gave rise to Earth Day. Thirty days before the spill, the

Apollo 8 astronauts who were preparing the way for the July, 1969 landing on the lunar surface, found themselves on a trial mission that made one of the first orbits around the moon. It was almost by accident, but they took a picture of earth as they emerged for the first time from the dark side of the moon. This “earth rise” image captivated international attention as everyone on our planet saw this glistening and magnificent orb in space for the first time. What a remarkable place, they observed, “seeing all three billion inhabitants of our home living together against the dark vastness of space.” Now 50 years later, that glistening sphere has more than doubled in population to 7.2 billion people. Can the earth survive such a population assault? What have we learned in 50 years, and where do we still need to go? I never expected to stay in Santa Barbara as I was getting out of college at the time of the first Earth Day, but that catalytic event transformed my life as well. Emerging out of the first celebration was a community ready to organize to stop the destruction of our own local environment. A “community environmental council” (CEC) was formed to bring people together, led by a young college student named Paul Relis. Within a short period of time, I was asked to become his Co-Director of this fledgling organization, and together we sought out opportunities to change the world. We wanted to created positive replicable models that would take hold, rather than just fighting against the status quo. Over the next ten years, we told stories about how bad the world might become without concerted acts of stewardship. It is interesting to look back on the predictions we made and to see what did, or did not, happen. For instance, we were convinced that 30 years in the future, the world would run out of oil by the year 2000. If we didn’t get on with building alternative transportation, the economy of our planet would grind to a halt. Well, that now makes for a good laugh! On the other hand, we launched the City/County Recycling Program in 1974, and our community pitch was that if we all saved wasted resources through “reducing, reusing, and recycling” our paper, cans, and bottles, we could divert 5% of the waste stream by 1980. Looking way out into the future, we suggested that by 1990 we could divert 25% of our throwaways, and way out in the year 2000 we could reach 50% diversion. None of us really knew whether or not this was possible, but it turned out that by the year 2012 Californians were divert-

EARTH DAY Page 424

Our hearts are full of gratitude for our fund holders, donors, and partners who have given thus far to the COVID-19 Joint Response Effort. Your gifts have been critical as we all navigate this global pandemic. We are also grateful to our nonprofit organizations who are working so hard for our most vulnerable in our communities. We are humbled and proud to call this community our home. 12 MONTECITO JOURNAL

23 – 30 April 2020

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23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

STAY STRONG SANTA BARBARA. WE’RE HERE FOR YOU.

The Right Stuff Shaking Things Up:

by Nicholas Schou

How Santa Barbara’s Kate Farms is Changing Lives with Plant-Based Lightning in a Bottle Richard Laver and his daughter Katie

erseverance must be all over the Laver family DNA. It was there for tennis giant Rod Laver when he won the Australian Open in five sets, four hours, and one-hundred-degree heat. It was there for Laver’s nephew Richard, who, with his wife Michelle spent years developing their own homegrown nutrition drink for their ailing daughter Katie. And perseverance has been there for Katie, too, who, at the age of five weighed a mere 16 – you read that correctly – pounds. Today, thanks to Richard and Michelle Laver’s persistent efforts, along with the efforts and strategic navigation from some notable Santa Barbara investors, Katie Laver is thriving and her namesake nutritional drink, Kate Farms, is a burgeoning local enterprise with 110 employees, providing vital nutrition to thousands of patients throughout the country. In fact, Kate Farms is now the most prescribed and recommended plant-based liquid formula drink in the country. However, the road getting to #1 was anything but traditional.

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14 MONTECITO JOURNAL

For the Lavers, their mission to bring plant-based nutrition to market is rooted in their daughter Katie’s cerebral palsy. The nature of her disease meant Katie needed a feeding tube and liquid nutrition for her very survival. Unfortunately, the commercial formulas available at the time didn’t work for her, in part because of her intolerance to dairy, casein, and sugars in the existing medical formulas. So as a result, Kate cycled in and out of hospitals often during her first five years of life. “Katie was sick and getting sicker,” Richard Laver recalls. “She was five years old, down to sixteen pounds, losing her hair, her teeth were rotting. She was getting food but the doctors couldn’t say anything more than she was failing to thrive and could die.” One day, while walking through a neighborhood farmers’ market, Richard came to a frustrating realization. “I was looking at all these fruits and vegetables,” he says, “and thought about how my daughter can’t chew foods and can’t get these essential antioxidants into her body.” Richard wondered to himself what would happen to his health if he stopped eating such healthy food. “Bingo,” he realized. “No matter how many calories we put in her body she keeps losing weight, so adding more calories isn’t the answer. She has to have something that will help her actually get healthy and thrive.” Michelle and Richard began visiting local health food stores hoping to find the healthiest ingredients to replace the formula that wasn’t helping Katie and working with nutritionists experienced in vegetarian nutrition. According to Richard, it took a couple of months for the couple to discover that Katie had no antioxidants in her system – but a lot of sugar thanks to the only other nutrition shakes that were available at the time. Via a series of experiments with concoctions that Michelle mixed together, the couple gradually perfected a recipe for Katie that was not only healthy because it was vegan and all-natural, but also surprisingly tasty. Instead of animal protein or dairy-based ingredients, the Lavers’ formula focused on a combination of organic, plant-

“It is not how much you do, but how much love you put in the doing.” – Mother Teresa

THE RIGHT STUFF Page 284

23 – 30 April 2020

On Entertainment

Steven Libowitz has reported on the arts and entertainment for more than 30 years; he has contributed to the Montecito Journal for more than 10 years.

by Steven Libowitz

‘Live from Lockdown’: Local Sisters Sing on Saturdays

ina Schlieske and her sister Laura are sheltering in place separately in Santa Barbara, but it’s hard to keep sisters apart for weeks on end, especially if they get along as well as the Schlieskes, who have been making music together for nearly all of their lives. Tina is best known for her solo gigs and a handful of bands she led in the Midwest, including Tina & the B Sides, which released several albums on their own label Movement Records before getting signed to a major record deal with Sire Records in 1996, for whom they recorded two CDs: Salvation and It’s All Just The Same. Their songs were featured in commercials and major movie soundtracks such as The Traveler, Very Bad Things, and A Simple Plan. Tina also toured with Double Trouble (Stevie Ray Vaughn’s band) and released several solo projects. Around town, Laura most prominently shares lead vocals in Area 51 with Michael Andres, the co-founder of Santa Barbara’s long-running

Tina Schlieske and her sister go live from their living room Saturday evenings at 6 pm

dance-party band. Right now, of course, neither of them is able to do what they usually do in performing in public, so Laura has been heading over to Tina’s

house every Saturday night since the coronavirus crisis caused the sheltering-in-place situation in early March. Their live concerts from the living room have already become something of a streaming sensation, attracting an average of more than 200 people per show, and as many as just shy of 1,000 at one minute-to-minute peak to hear Tina strum and sing co-leads and harmonies with sister Laura sitting in. “We’re the only people that we trust to get together with, because neither of us is doing anything other than staying home and practicing social distancing,” Tina said. “We do all the washing of hands and everything, even putting the mail outside on the patio table for three days before we touch it.” She gave us the lowdown on Tina & Laura Live from Lockdown over the phone earlier in the week. Visit www. facebook.com/TinaSchlieske. Q: How did you come up with the idea of doing the duo concerts on a weekly

basis? A: When I first started, I’d just gotten back from traveling when I was supposed to be playing at SXSW. We canceled the trip when we heard how things were going in Italy. So that very first Saturday, I suggested to Laura that we do a live online show for people on lockdown. It went so well that it just kept going. I have quite a few musician friends who rely on performing at my shows as their income. I know they’re coming up short now. What better way than to go online and try to get tips for the bands and raise awareness for other businesses, restaurants here in Santa Barbara and friends who own important venues in Minneapolis that are also hurting. It felt like a community-based way for people to spread some help around if you can afford it. And if you can’t, I just love giving people a distraction from what they’re going through. It’s really not about the money, but I’m so appreciative of the open-hearted generosity. It’s really been helpful for my musicians. How are the two of you choosing what to play? In the beginning, it was the set we’d usually do with the Graceland Exiles from our Santa Barbara shows. Then

ENTERTAINMENT Page 164

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• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

ENTERTAINMENT (Continued from page 15)

the tribute to Minneapolis show we did was mostly my originals from my band Tina & the B Sides. Now lately it’s covers and old songs that I haven’t played in a while, or things Laura wants to sing. And we’re also doing a few of our old songs to keep it as fresh as possible as long as it feels good now. I’ve also been trying to choose songs that have meaning during what we’re going through at this time, some things that are self-reflective but also ones that help people forget the craziness of the state we’re living in right now, and provide some release and relief.

Speaking of that, are you coming up with new material sparked by the “new normal” conditions of sheltering in place? I thought in the beginning of the lockdown that I’d get a lot of new songs written. I don’t know why, but I haven’t been feeling that energy. There’s so much going on in the world that mostly I just feel unsettled, which isn’t where my creativity comes from. I’m too uneasy. I think once this is all over, I’ll be able to look back, be more reflective, process everything and put into perspective everything I was going through, and write some new stuff. Writing some-

thing just doesn’t feel like something I have access to right now. So instead, if every day I can learn a new (cover) song that can express some emotions – the insecurity, the joy, and the fear – I’m OK with that. So what cover songs are inspiring you? I was really taken by the passing of John Prine, and I’ve been revisiting his catalogue and remembering what an incredible American singer-songwriter he was, such a reflection of what that means. I grew up listening to him, my mom played John Prine songs all the time. Covering some of his songs is such a treat and honor, to feel those songs again. Revisiting the catalog has been great. Whatever you and Laura are singing, you seem so much more vibrant than most live things I’ve seen on Facebook or Zoom. Maybe it’s because there’s two of you, but I think there’s also something more organic about how you are performing, so it feels more alive and connected. I do try to make it as much as possible feel like we’re all in the room together, and convey that with energy, try hard not to be stiff like some iPhone or iPad recordings. When I’ve seen some other videos during this time, people seem to be worried about making a mistake because it’s

Stream performances by Alastair Greene on his Facebook page, Thursdays at 1 pm

live. But to me, if you make a mistake or hit a wrong note – who cares? It doesn’t affect how I feel in the moment. For me, I’m just wanting not to get sick of singing some of the same songs each week. We’ve got a lot of people on the East Coast, out in Minneapolis and here on the West Coast watching us. I love that people are tuning in from everywhere. So when I start to wonder out loud if others are getting tired of what we’re doing, I get a flood of comments on Facebook and Instagram saying, “Please don’t stop doing this. It gives us something to look forward to.” It’s really cool that people are enjoying it, which makes us happy because it keeps Laura and I sane also. How much are you able to interact? Do you take live requests over social media? We haven’t yet, because we can’t see the screen, so we just play our set. But this Saturday we’re going to change it up, and experiment with having live requests. I’m going to set it up so we can see what they’re saying and see on the fly what people want to hear.

Regular Sets and Sounds for Sheltering in Place

16 MONTECITO JOURNAL

Among the other area artists who are performing frequently via Facebook Live, Instagram or Zoom are the great Glen Phillips, the frontman for Santa Barbara-born pop band Toad the Wet Sprocket and a significant solo singer-songwriter. Phillips, who lived for more than two decades in Montecito, has been playing live acoustic living room sessions several times a week since the lockdown was first suggested. The sets range from half an hour to upwards of an hour, and include material from his “Being a nurse means to hold all your own tears and start drawing smiles on people’s faces.” – Dana Basem

vast catalog as well as covers that resonate with him. As longtime fans have noted on his FB page, “never has his music felt so comforting, so uplifting, so necessary than in these uncertain times.” Phillips – who also is running his ongoing weekly song circles where he leads call-and-response community singing now over Zoom – uses each live stream as a fundraiser for local or national nonprofits, normally raising more than $1,000 per night. Visit www.facebook. com/glenphillips. Then there’s Throwdown Thursdays, the weekly gig-at-home from Alastair Greene, a native blues master who once managed the Lobero’s Box Office before going on to record several award-winning blues records and tour the world as Alan Parsons’ lead guitarist. Greene has been going gangbusters for more than an hour every Thursday at 1 pm since late-March, performing on a wide selection of guitars (I counted at least half a dozen on a recent show, including two acoustic slide guitars and twice as many electric models), with repertoire that covers Mississippi masters, Chicago R&B, California blues-rock and what have you, all from his home studio in Ventura. Episode 4 last Thursday was “The Birthday Edition,” as Greene got to celebrate his impending 49th virtually via Zoom. The sets also sometimes include a Q&A session, hearing Greene go at it with your suggestions, and a vinyl sharing segment that the guitarist calls “What are you listening to?” The shows are also partial fundraisers for such organizations as Doctors Without Borders. Head over to www.facebook.com/AlastairGreeneOfficial to peruse the recordings or catch this week’s edition.

ENTERTAINMENT Page 204 23 – 30 April 2020

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Now more than ever, our team will be available to provide any assistance you may need. Please give us a call if you have any questions. We thank you for your continued trust and understanding and we look forward to assisting you! LEARN MORE AT VILLAGESITE.COM All information provided is deemed reliable, but has not been verified and we do not guarantee it. We recommend that buyers make their own inquiries.

23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

ON THE RECORD

Nicholas Schou

Nicholas Schou is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of several books, including Orange Sunshine and Kill the Messenger. If you have tips or stories about Montecito, please email him at newseditor@montecitojournal.net

Montecito Journal Hosts Zoom Call with Local Politicians and Business Owners

ast Friday morning, around 100 people joined a Zoom conference call hosted by Montecito Journal Editor-in-Chief Gwyn Lurie and Publisher Tim Buckley. The goal of the call was to generate ideas that could help businesses bounce back from the loss of revenue stemming from social-distancing restrictions that were set in place by California a month ago. The call lasted for roughly two hours and amounted to both a call to action and a brainstorming session where both politicians and community leaders were able to talk together about how to both survive and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Lurie started off the meeting by welcoming everyone to the call. “I didn’t imagine meeting everyone this way,” she joked, before thanking everyone for participating and quickly getting to the point of the call. “The more we share ideas for businesses to survive this time, the better off we will be as a community.” One of the first people to address the group was Congressman Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara). “We all need to work together,” Carbajal said. “The response by the government has not been perfect and we can always do better.” Carbajal said that while the federal government had approved an $8.3 billion aid package via the Coronavirus Response Act, not all of the cash has reached local communities. “The first thing we need to do is fix those issues that have prevented aid from going out to businesses,” he

18 MONTECITO JOURNAL

said. “This is not just a government challenge, it’s a challenge that crosses all sectors including the private sector.” Carbajal said he had confidence that the feds will follow through with another aid package that will provide loans so local government agencies can acquire personal protective equipment or PPEs for their front-line workers as well as Economic Injury Disaster (EIDL) Loans via the Small Business Administration specifically geared at helping local businesses. “This is not the time to play politics,” concluded Carbajal, “but a time to come together as a nation.” First District Supervisor Das Williams, who was juggling his children in self-isolation at home, spoke next. “I’m here more to listen than to talk,” he said. “I am very concerned about the economic fallout to you as small business owners and to your employees.” Although Williams said he was optimistic that California and Santa Barbara County in particular would be able to start rolling back some of the social-distancing restrictions soon, he said that it is still too early to know when that could happen. “One thing that is clear is that we need more testing supplies,” he said. “Re-opening is dependent on enhanced testing.” Unfortunately, it remains unclear how quickly Santa Barbara residents will be able to count on tests being made available to the general population, without which there is no

Congressman Salud Carbajal

way officials can reliably say how many people are infected with the virus. Until that happens, how can businesses assure their customers that they are safe to be open? On that note, Lurie suggested the possibility that the county could provide a coronavirus certification or ranking system much like how some counties rank restaurants with letter grades based on their compliance with health codes. “I think it’s a great idea,” Williams responded. “That way restaurants can say that Public Health has been by to certify them.” But Williams said he wasn’t sure a ranking system was a good idea because many residents are already scared that the social-distancing measures in place represent a massive power grab by local government. “In reality, our power is very limited at the local level,” he argued. “We have a lot more flexibility at the county level with land use rather than health codes, which are controlled by the state.” Next to speak was Santa Barbara City Councilwoman Alejandra Gutierrez, who asserted that the city has shown in the past how resilient it can be. “We can grow in this experience,” she said, “and have shown that before.” Mayor Cathy Murillo followed up Gutierrez by saying that her office is putting together a task force to try to help the community through the crisis. “We need to focus on survival, then recovery,” she said. “Homeless and gang activity is a real problem right now, and revenues at the city will be hard hit. We are looking at Coast Village Road,” she added, with a nod to Montecito, “because it’s in our jurisdiction, but we don’t mind helping anybody.” After the politicians weighed in, Lurie opened up the conference call to business owners interested in brainstorming solutions to the ongoing economic slump. “Is there a way Salud or Das can provide

“How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.” – Florence Nightingale

support for people impacted by the Thomas Fire and debris flow and are just now recovering?” asked Leslie Person Ryan, owner of Letter Perfect. Carbajal answered that only the Small Business Association (SBA) could answer that question. “It’s going to come down to the agency saying, ‘Show us what prior support there was and then what additional injury occurred,’” he said, offering to take up the query with the SBA. “I will brainstorm and see if there is any way we can do this. My office will do that. We will take it up the flagpole and see what we can do.” Other ideas that came up included the concept of restaurants offering exclusive dine-in service to a customer willing to pay for the luxury, while the restaurant’s kitchen could simultaneously cook up food for delivery, as well as arranging for “cash mobs” to throw support – either in the form of to-go orders or gift certificates – to a rotating list of businesses. “We are creating a master list of businesses as a resource for people,” said Journal Publisher Buckley, who added that if local residents don’t support their neighborhood small businesses, Montecito’s semi-rural, small town lifestyle would be jeopardized. “If businesses fail, bigger chains will move in,” he said. “Maybe we can pull on people’s heartstrings to prevent that from happening.” Bob Ludwick, president of the Coast Village Association, agreed with Buckley and Lurie about the need for a smaller group of business owners and journalists to convene with the mission of coming up with an action plan to save Montecito’s retail economy. “This is a unique time,” he argued, adding that both Montecito’s lower and upper villages needed to work together as one. “It’s something of a sacrilege to say this because normally there is a friendly rivalry, but this transcends that. This is one village.” •MJ 23 – 30 April 2020

A call to those who can help.

$10,000 Matching Grant By Montecito Firefighters Charitable Foundation

Make a donation via PayPal on our website at: 93108fund.org/donate

93108fund.org

Use this link to donate now. 1. Open your smartphone camera. 2. Point at the QR code. 3. Click website link.

Info@93108fund.org

A special thank you to our round 1 donors:

A thank you note from a recipient of our grant.

“Hello to whom ever made this all possible, I’m

welling up as I write this!

To think that my little town cares enough about our busy main drag dental shop to offer this amazing gift! Losing my roommate and not getting stimulus or unemployment yet was stressing me out big time! So I went to Costco with this gift card and got all my essentials to last a month or more! I almost cried in Costco too! Knowing that this covered it made me so happy! I just told all my coworkers how lucky we are to have this fund! Thank you thank you! I’m on a diet anyways to conserve my food this way is just an extra special thing as well! My feeling down just got lighter! Wish you all healthy happy lockdown days no matter what! Thank you thank you!”

COVID-19 Relief Score Card Cash and Pledges Raised Grants Paid out Applicants

$91,885 $62,000 869

Kim Williamson Liz Dalling Steven Gumins Hugo and Carolynn Croft Marc Gamson Mary Harris Laura Wyatt Patricia Cedeno Andrew Rusch Eudice Taran Laura Wyatt James McFarlane Laura Johnston Patricia Swenson Patricia Tisch Pamela Strobel Henry Tinsley Paul deBruynKops Christina Panos Linda Ochiltree Donald Bell Frank Meister Bliter Family Janet Baker Julia Rodgers Jimmy Stevens Danit & Kevin Nuckels Michele Cuttler Tracy Bollag Victoria Ward Thomas Moldauer Thomas Washing Marsha Kotlyar Crystal and Cliff Wyatt Troy Hoidal Adam Feild Leslie Bhutani

Matthew Lux Colleen Casey Patricia Raphaelian Catherine Haslem Kimberly Hungerford Richelle Gaspar Lauren Katz Catherine Nietzel Nancy Oconnor Zev Nathan Holly Dobberpuhl Carol Sacks Scott Anschuetz Linda Ochiltree Andrea Sanchez Ashley Adams Nicole Woodhouse Elizabeth Raith Zoe Jaye Debby Peterson Montecito Firefighters Charitable Foundation Julie Teufal The Center Foundation Inc Kirby Jones Foundation Pat McElroy Richard and Diana Spieker John III and Julia Rodgers Gary and Susan Gulbransen Englehard Foundation Connor Capital Amomymous (2)

Win.Win.Give is the official sponsor of the 93108Fund. Win.Win.Give is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and collected donations and distributed grants directly on behalf of the 93108Fund. The 93108Fund made all grant decisions based on objective and verifiable information provided by applicants and distributed grants on a first-come first-serve basis. The fund is managed and administered by local volunteers with proceeds going directly to those in need.

Our Team: Ron Blitzer, Gregg Bigger, Gregg Wilson, Alison Hardey, Kristin Teufel, Nicole Herlihy, Laura Wyatt, Michele Cuttler, Tricia Raphelian, Julia Rodgers, Lane P. Bhutani, Kelly Finefrock

23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

ENTERTAINMENT (Continued from page 16)

Singer-songwriter Showcase Dives into Digital

Veteran local singer-songwriter and educator Nicola Gordon has been hosting showcases at MichaelKate Interiors for years. But with the showroom shuttered during the pandemic, the music has migrated over to Zoom. The third showcase in her now twicea-month series takes place on April 29, during the usual on-site date of the last Wednesday of the month. Audiences are invited to tune in live to check out the latest creations from Gordon’s group of budding songsmiths at around 5:15 pm, with individual performances lasting no longer than four minutes including intro. Gordon, too, has frequently been posting videos of new songs, originally every day at 12 noon, on her Facebook page, which is where you can also find the link for the showcase. Visit www. facebook.com/nicolag1.

Potent Potable Poetry

If COVID-19 hadn’t caused everything to come to a close, and everyone to halt, suddenly in the middle of March, George Yatchisin would be hosting the sixth annual “Spirits in the Air: Potent Potable Poetry” reading at The Good Lion lounge this Friday, April 24, when the “Drinkable Landscape” columnist for Edible Santa Barbara and food writer for the Santa Barbara Independent would have been joined by a handful of invited poets to read work about libations of all sorts. The springtime soirée is a tribute to the fact that, as the event flyer boasts, “poets have found inspiration, solace, and yes, sometimes sickness in the bottle.”

Instead, the recitation of alcohol-infused verse has gone virtual, with the poets and readers confined to their homes, forced to read their own and others’ lines sans the clinking of glasses and the shaking of cocktails at the busy bar next door to the Granada Theatre. While that might be cause for concern, the good news is that the event is one of the few surviving gatherings for 2020 Santa Barbara Poetry Month, held in conjunction with April National Poetry Month. “We have a great bar scene in Santa Barbara and poets and bars have tended to go together for good or for ill throughout history,” Yatchisin said, explaining the origins of the event. “It’s fun to do a reading at an actual bar.” The rules are that each invited poet has to write about some kind of spirit – beer, wine, mixed drinks – “or it can just be dropped in rather than the whole theme of the poem,” he said. “And it doesn’t have to be positive. There are a lot of great poems about the problems with alcohol.” Each poet reads one of their own pieces, and one by somebody else, because “spirits have been a rich vein for writers throughout history.” But then COVID-19 crashed the party. Yatchisin said he imagined he would have to shut it down in the face of shelter at home orders. But then he and his wife, former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Chryss Yost, took part in a similar reading online for an anthology they both contributed to as part of Poetry Zone, and realized they could try that with Spirits in the Air. “The great thing about Zoom is that people don’t have to be here, so you can read and listen from wherever you are,” Yatchisin said. “But I still wanted

“Shuddering awe is mankind’s noblest part” - Oswald Spengler

Juan de Arellano Basket of Flowers (ca. 1664); Museo del Prado, Madrid

Chryss Yost and George Yatchisin present “Spirits in the (Virtual) Air: Potent Potable Poetry” on Friday, April 27 on Zoom

to keep it to the poets I would have had reading at the live event. I know lots of readers in Iowa and Tokyo, but I wanted to keep it local. But of course, people are more than welcome to tune in wherever they are.” Featured readers for Friday include the host and Yost, the third Santa Barbara Poet Laureate David Starkey, and the current one Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Montecito writer Diana Raab, plus Susan Chiavelli, Linda Saccoccio, Emma Trelles, and Jace Turner. Just as in the live event, the virtual reading will have a fast pace and something of a light heart despite the trying times, Yatchisin said. “The idea is to do a poetry reading that’s more entertaining and fun and not quite as dreary as they can often be. And we try to keep it moving. It’s not a complaint; we just wanted to do something lighter and more fun, something that would make you want to hoist your own cocktail and cheer rather than tear up, particularly given the times we’re in now. It’s nice to comfort people a tiny bit.” The hoisting of spirits will come

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20 MONTECITO JOURNAL

individually, of course, although people can still support The Good Lion, the usual host for the annual reading, by purchasing a to-go cocktail to enjoy at home while listening. (Order via shakermillsb.com on Friday, but no later than 4 pm for pickup at Shaker Mill, 418 State Street.) As for Yatchisin, his cleverly-titled poem “An Ode to Ears” is about bourbon. “But even before that, it’s about corn, which you have to have to make the bourbon,” he said. “I wanted to get to the heart of the thing – the farm to table, farm to bottle feel. That’s where mine begins.” He’ll also be reading Leonard Cohen’s “The Golden Gate,” from the singer-songwriter/poet’s final collection, The Flame. It’s set in San Francisco but for some reason he was drinking margaritas, of all things. Perhaps Cohen was using the City by the Bay as a metaphor for Fiesta in Santa Barbara. Hard to tell with poets. “Spirits in the (Virtual) Air: Potent Potable Poetry” takes place at 7 pm Friday, April 27, over Zoom at https:// ucsb.zoom.us/j/94305572625. Admission is free. •MJ

Started in 2007

“Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription.” – Val Saintsbury

805/252-4970

23 – 30 April 2020

ear friends and neighbors,

We once again ﬁnd ourselves in an unprecedented time. We are all adjusting to a new form of “normal” as we work, learn, play, pray, dine, exercise, and commune in our homes. Fortunately, our community knows a thing or two about rising up to face a challenge and thriving in times of adversity. Now more than ever, we are proud to have such meaningful work. Helping people ﬁnd their homes is an honor and responsibility we take very seriously - even more so as our homes have become both shelter and sanctuary.

P A R T

R S

R I S

AT E

We are constantly being asked, “What’s happening in the market?” Real estate is a constant in times of change and though it has not been “business as usual,” the market is still moving, albeit at a different pace. Some buyers are pushing pause due to uncertainty and others are looking to our community as a respite from more urban areas. Others have tried to renegotiate prices on existing escrows and have had varying levels of success. Montecito has always been a nuanced market and should you have questions about what is happening with home values, are considering a move, or wondering how the coronavirus crisis affects your property, we would be honored to be your real estate resource.

G R

Most importantly, this is a town we hold dear. We are endlessly grateful for all of you who make up the spirit of our resilient community. At a time when coming together means staying apart, our community’s strength remains grounded in unity, love, and support for our neighbors. Beyond the stucco and structures, what resides in our hearts is what really deﬁnes this place we all call home. THANK YOU for being our home! From our hearts to yours, RISKIN PARTNERS

DINA LANDI

SARAH HANACEK

JASMINE TENNIS

team@ RiskinPartners.com 805.565.8600 23 – 30 April 2020

ROBERT RISKIN

Village Properties Realtors license #01954177 • The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

Surfing the Curve by Mitchell Kriegman Novelist Being Audrey Hepburn, Things I Can’t Explain. Creator Clarissa Explains it All and more. Writer for The New Yorker, LARB, National Lampoon, and Saturday Night Live

Dr. Lynn Fitzgibbons

hen you ask Dr. Lynn Fitzgibbons what’s new, you don’t hear stories about reordering her spice rack in quarantine, streaming the latest show on Netflix, or growing her own victory garden. She’s kind of busy. Quarantine is a luxury for others. She did mention that she’s taken up marathon running, which is pretty remarkable, considering she’s running an all-day marathon, day in and day out at the Cottage Hospital. As the Cottage Hospital specialist in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine, at the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Fitzgibbons goes where others fear to tread. She has treated Ebola in the Congo, been on the front lines for other epidemics as well, focusing on the world’s deadliest diseases with enormous precision, thoughtfulness and understanding. Turns out Dr. Fitzgibbons is also a Division One athlete. A graduate of Santa Barbara High School and UCSB, she’s been on soccer and swim

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22 MONTECITO JOURNAL

teams at both institutions, a surfer as well, familiar with all the local beach breaks. Shortly before the wave of infections began, she took up running with every bit of the determination she’s shown in fighting the coronavirus. “I coached her through her first marathon,” Rusty Snow of Santa Barbara Running and Racing remarks. “Division One athletes are at a different level. With very minimal training, she qualified for the Boston Marathon, something that people take years to do. Her focus was amazing, so strong. We’re lucky to have her in our community during a crisis like this.” She was supposed to run her second Boston Marathon this week, needless to say she won’t be attending. No one will.

Cottage Hospital from the Inside

Q: If we could see what you see every day, what would that look like? A: I think you’d see a tremendous amount of very successful preparation and really excellent care for people in our community who are already suffering from this disease. Is that because Cottage Hospital started working on this a long time ago or is it because you’ve been able to catch up? Our community is in a fortunate position where we had excellent social distancing before our first big wave of cases. That has served us well. It’s meant that over the last six weeks while we have had cases throughout the Santa Barbara area and clearly community spread, there’s also been good social distancing. That’s kept our local curve very flat.

Lynn runs the track at SBCC

Are there other community factors that have supported your efforts? We have a community that is very committed to doing the right thing. We have the good fortune of excellent weather and a population that is fairly spread out. We’ve had excellent commitment from our public health officials, from our local business leaders and from our local school districts that have made social distancing feasible.

Based on the numbers in our local hospitals, which have been relatively flat, we can presume that the number in the community has also likely been relatively flat.

How do we continue to hold fast and for how long? How do we to keep it up? We cannot continue to live with the degree of social distancing that we’ve undertaken over the last weeks. At some point, for a variety of reasons, we will have to start to reintroduce some of our interactions. As May and June come, we have the opportunity to consider re-introducing some of our social interactions in a controlled stepwise way. As we do so, we need to implement really excellent infection control practices. For example, schools could be thinking ahead to hand

“Bound by paperwork, short on hands, sleep, and energy… nurses are rarely short on caring.” – Sharon Hudacek

hygiene opportunities. Businesses need to have the same thoughts with regards to infection control practices and how to keep their employees as safe as possible.

Concerns Related to Success

Are you concerned that people will let go of their safe practices and become more vulnerable again? Yes, one concern I have is actually related to the success we’ve had so far. Here in Santa Barbara, the vast majority of our community has not been exposed to this virus which means as a community, we are relatively non-immune. We can assume that many in our population may not have had this virus. That in and of itself may be a vulnerability. Communities where a large proportion of the population has already experienced this disease are actually less vulnerable when social distancing relaxes. Obviously, the whole community hasn’t been tested. Are you able to say that based on indicators that you have? Even though a large proportion of people who catch this infection are not going to need to come into the hospital, some percentage will. Based on the numbers in our local hospitals, which have been relatively flat, we can presume that the number in the community has also likely been relatively flat. Misinformation has been a frequent

SURFING Page 274 23 – 30 April 2020

VILLAGE BEAT (Continued from page 8) Two workers from Los Arroyos hold their envelopes with $100 debit cards that they received from the 93108Fund last week

Brilliant Thoughts by Ashleigh Brilliant Born London, 1933. Mother Canadian. Father a British civil servant. World War II childhood spent mostly in Toronto and Washington, D.C. Berkeley PhD. in American History, 1964. Living in Santa Barbara since 1973. No children. Best-known for his illustrated epigrams, called “Pot-Shots”, now a series of 10,000. Email ashleigh@west.net or visit www.ashleighbrilliant.com

Living on a Postcard

Two workers from Caffe Luxxe hold the envelopes from the 93108Fund for the workers at their coffee shop who are receiving $100 debit cards because they lost their jobs or their hours were cut significantly

Blitzer, who has lived in Montecito nearly 20 years. The official sponsor of the 93108Fund is Win.Win.Give, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Volunteers of the 93108Fund include: Ron Blitzer, Gregg Bigger, Gregg Wilson, Kristen Teufel, Alison Hardey, Nicole Herlihy, Laura Wyatt, Michele Cuttler, Julia Rodgers, Lane Bhutani, Tricia Raphaelian, and Kelly Finefrock.

Casa Dorinda Pivots During Coronavirus

Like the majority of the Montecito community, residents at Casa Dorinda are quietly sheltering at home, acknowledging that they are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19. Casa Dorinda has taken strict precautions to ensure the virus does not make its way onto the 48-acre campus, located in the heart of Montecito. In a recent interview with Casa’s president and executive officer Brian McCague, he reported that residents are handling the unique time as well as can be expected. Prior to official shelter-at-home orders given by Governor Gavin Newsom in mid-March, Casa began implementing social distancing measures in late February, as the virus began showing up at several retirement facilities on both sides of the country. “We started taking action once we knew what a threat this was,” McCague said, adding that during that time, any resident or staff traveling outside of California, 23 – 30 April 2020

or within the state on mass transit, were required to self-isolate for 14 days. All activities and gatherings were canceled at that time, which includes a plethora of well-attended weekly activities including fitness classes, bocce tournaments, parties, and more. Following the state-mandated stay-at-home orders, the campus was closed to all visitors, except for end-of-life situations. The dining room was also closed, with all meals being delivered directly to the 325 residents, and a curbside pickup offered to the 90 off-campus residents who live in their own homes in Montecito. “We’ve had to make some big changes, but the safety of our residents and staff is the utmost priority,” McCague said. Staff members’ roles have shifted: the crews that used to provide maid services are now being utilized for grocery, pharmacy, and other deliveries for residents, as leaving the campus for errands is highly discouraged. “They don’t want us to leave, and we know why!” said resident Jean von Wittenburg, who has lived at Casa Dorinda with her husband, Davis, for 15 years. “It’s been getting pretty lonely around here without all the socializing we are used to. But we’re handling it,” Jean said. McCague said other staff members have been tasked with sanitizing the campus multiple times a day; wiping down handrails, door handles, and benches, to help ensure the residents

VILLAGE BEAT Page 454

y home, since 1973, has been almost literally a stone’s throw from an area so celebrated for its beauty that calling it “picturesque” would be an understatement. In one sweeping panorama, you have the ocean, the mountains, a lovely rose garden, tall gracious trees, and a broad green sward leading up to the cloistered front of one of the most famous buildings in California, the Old Spanish Mission of Santa Barbara. Although its founding goes back only to the late Eighteenth Century, in this part of the world that makes it equivalently venerable to Stonehenge or the Pyramids. And, as with those other hallowed structures, religion has been a principal element in this setting. But this is the age of the Tourist – a phenomenon which began not long after the Mission Era was at its height, when travel became relatively comfortable, safe, and cheap. And, keeping pace with improvements in transportation – and sometimes outstripping them – was the increasing ease and affordability of communication – of which a prime example was the postal service. We owe the concept of inexpensive pre-paid postage, using adhesive stamps, to one man – an energetic British reformer named Rowland Hill. His efforts led to the first stamps (bearing the likeness of the young Queen Victoria) which were issued in 1840. But it wasn’t for another half-century that what we know as “picture postcards” began to appear, giving tourists a way of sharing what they were seeing with the folks back home, while their travels were still in progress. It was these attractive types of images, usually photographic, often in color, on single mailable pieces of sturdy paper, which one saw for sale in great variety, frequently on large revolving racks, wherever visitors to an area abounded. But the images appeared only on one side. On the other, there was space for a message, an address, and a postage stamp – besides, perhaps, some printed information. Living in a tourist Mecca like Santa Barbara, and especially being, as I have been for half my life, virtually next-door to a shrine like the Mission, I hope you can understand my feeling that I live on a postcard. But, in a completely different, and

• The Voice of the Village •

perhaps somewhat ironical, sense, I had already been living on postcards for some years before I came here. In fact, after starting out as a teacher, I had invented a career founded on the postcard as a new form of literature. Instead of a scenic image, each card bore a brief illustrated epigram. Occasionally, they were place-related. Since this started in San Francisco, one of my early messages (which is still popular there) said, “There may be no Heaven anywhere – but somewhere, there is a San Francisco.” And I do have one for what eventually became my hometown: “Once, the whole world was beautiful – Now, there’s only Santa Barbara.” But, I was not making picture-postcards in the conventional sense. The only connection with a specific place was a short sales message on the back, offering a catalog, and giving my address. [If I may share a trade secret, this was the key to my business success, because the cards, by their very nature as a means of communication, went everywhere, and thus advertised themselves.] People bought them, not because of the locality, but because the words gave expression to their own feelings. For example, among the very first ten, there was one showing a man leaning over a counter, and saying, “No – Life isn’t what I wanted. Haven’t you got anything else?” The question of illustrations was always a vexed one. Although not a trained artist, I started out doing all the art myself. Some attempts were more successful than others, but, for me, such work was drudgery, and my hope was always to meet some artist whose talents meshed with my own. This, however, never happened, and instead, for better or worse, I developed a technique of utilizing a variety of copyright-free materials, thus calling into being a new skill – that of matching illustrations with words they were never intended for. (My words always came first.) When my wife and I moved to Santa Barbara, we brought the business with us, and, for a few years it flourished. Then came email, and the postcard boom was over. But the concept of illustrated epigrams is still alive, and, in that sense, if I’m no longer living on a postcard, you can at least say that I’m still living on an epigram. •MJ MONTECITO JOURNAL

Flying Down the Highway to a New Normal by Mitchell Kriegman

Sherry Villanueva in Acme Hospitality’s flagship restaurant the Lark

Former restaurant workers in Acme Hospitality’s Food Bank for employees

riving the seven hours from Nevada City to Santa Barbara, Sherry Villanueva was talking about shifting gears. Back in February, Acme Hospitality, the boutique restaurant and development group she manages, moved into the hotel business. At that time the company was in the midst of renovating two of the most iconic hotels in Nevada County, California, gems of the Wild West. The Holbrooke Hotel, built in1862, once lodged the likes of Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, and the notorious mistress of King Ludwig of Bavaria, Lola Montez. In the 1850s, The National Exchange Hotel, was the site of one of the “most sophisticated” gold rush mining camps in the untamed frontier. Sophisticated, as in downright highfalutin’ and ace high. When the Lark opened in 2013, Ms. Villanueva and her crew took Santa Barbara by storm, creating a new paradigm of design, service, and expectation in Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone. Since then they’ve opened a slew of new bars and restaurants, each one eclectic and attention-grabbing. A former marketing executive, she’d been so busy designing and running new establishments that it had been hard to track her down. Then suddenly,

on March 15, the emergency brakes slammed on, screaming the entire economy of the United States, and much of the world, into a tail-spinning, gear-grinding halt. “We had been on schedule to finish the renovations and open, but obviously now that’s changed,” Ms. Villanueva noted. “We’re still excited about the properties because we believe they’re positioned well.” Both hotels have easy drive market access to the Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley. “I think post-crisis there’s going to be renewed interest in Americans discovering regional locations within the United States,” Ms. Villanueva added. “Our two hotels are located with direct access to incredible natural resources, hiking, fishing, swimming, and boating, right on the way to Tahoe.” Acme’s track record as a business driver in Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone along with their flagship restaurant, the Lark, instantly summon up preCOVID nostalgia of sipping artisan cocktails, laughing shoulder to shoulder in a noisy, lushly designed, woodlined bar and dining area, while nibbling on plates of pork belly and oysters. There’s also Acme’s sister restaurant, paella-slinging “crazy-girl”

• Available for urgent care. • Infection control protocol followed, with all areas sanitized including wait area and exam room. 1483 E. Valley Road, Suite M | 805.969.6090

24 MONTECITO JOURNAL

Loquita, that features exotic cocktails such as its award-wining Costa Blanca gin and tonic with Makrut lime infused gin and the juice of blood oranges. But more than the drinks, more than the food, more than the ambiance, the secret of Ms. Villanueva’s restaurants has always been the people who worked there. “We have 350 employees. We furloughed 345,” Ms. Villanueva recounts. “Then there’s probably 1,500 people that are connected in various ways to the restaurants. Delivery drivers, farmers, wine distributors, the cleaning crew, plumbers, all the people we knew and worked with who were interconnected.” Still driving, she hesitates a moment, forming her thoughts, silent on her handsfree phone, speeding down the empty highways up north. “I think that’s something we’ve all learned now,” she adds, “How interconnected we all are. Interdependent, which is I think, a valuable thing to learn.” Restaurateurs are a unique culture. They are passionately coupled to their restaurants, deeply attached to their staff, and avidly involved with their guests. Restaurant economies are different, too. Unlike other kinds of retail or small business economies, the hospitality business is driven by reinvention, constant change, personal service, tipping, and other factors. Restaurants collectively are the largest private sector employer of people in the country, 10% of the workforce, 15.1 million restaurant employees in the United States virtually all unemployed at the moment. No one gets rich on restaurant wages, but waiters and bartenders, even bussers, can have a good life. Restaurant profitability

“Hardships often prepare people for an extraordinary destiny.” – C.S. Lewis

runs at very low margins, dependent on current cash flow. “You buy food, you get invoiced, you sell that food, and then that invoice is due,” Ms. Villanueva explains. “You’re using today’s sales to pay for yesterday’s, it rolls like that. When sales shut down, it’s like a freight train coming behind you. Accounts payable, all your bills, instantly due.” The financial toll of the shutdown and uncertainty is devastating, add a family scare and lesser people would have collapsed. Ms. Villanueva’s 27-year-old daughter in Dallas, Texas, was hospitalized four weeks ago. She had persistent high fever and respiratory challenges. She tested negative for the coronavirus, but clinically she had the symptoms. “She was in total isolation for two days,” Ms. Villanueva recounts. “I would have taken the twenty-twohour drive immediately, but her symptoms were shifting more positively. Luckily she had a significant other boyfriend who was just fantastic.” Her daughter has fully recovered.

Restaurant Employees – The Soul of the Enterprise

Her 12 restaurants and bars – the Lark, Loquita, Tyger Tyger, Helena Avenue Bakery, Lucky Penny, Notary Public, Monkeyshine, Pearl Social, The Santa Barbara Wine Collective, and the recently acquired Santa Barbara landmark, The Paradise Café – an extraordinary number of diverse establishments – went from busy and near capacity to shuttering in 24 hours. Just the amount of work it takes to empty nine walk-in refrigerators with no staff was a challenge. But most of all it was losing the people, those individuals who many guests of the Lark

NEW NORMAL Page 364 23 – 30 April 2020

To our unsung heroes that

we all owe a debt of gratitude.

Thank you so very much!

grocery postal workers workers

pharmacists

utility gardeners workers delivery

non-profits drivers

garbage collectors and many many more...

–The Bollag family, Michael, Tracy, Justin, and Jordan 23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

Perspectives by Rinaldo S. Brutoco Rinaldo S. Brutoco is the Founding President and CEO of the Santa Barbara-based World Business Academy and a co-founder of JUST Capital. He’s a serial entrepreneur, executive, author, radio host, and futurist who’s published on the role of business in relation to pressing moral, environmental, and social concerns for over 35 years

Smile-Worthy Moments from Big Cities

A New Federalism – Part II

n part one of this four-part series we traced the history of Federalism from the Founding 13 Colonies and the Articles of Confederation through to the Constitution replacing the Articles in 1789. We then saw Federalism evolving through the Civil War up to the present day. This installment looks at Federalism at its best (i.e. when it really worked for the nation), and the current status handling the coronavirus pandemic (i.e. when it didn’t work). From FDR’s “New Deal” in the 1930s up through World War II until the 1970s, the evolving Federalism worked exceptionally well. FDR drove the beginning of that era by pushing the federal government into a massive effort to stop the Great Depression, and then continued that buildup of national power through the mobilization of World War II. In that period the respective states were more than happy to let the central government deal with society’s greatest challenges leading us out of the Great Depression and then leading us to victory in World War II. By common consent, all agreed that only the federal government could command the resources of the nation to bring us through those twin emergencies. That is not to say that all states were happy to cede such power, but in the face of enormous destabilization they were willing to go along. Until… Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus in 1957 attempted to stop the integration of Little Rock’s central high school with the overt justification of “States’ Rights.” This was the beginning of the end of the vast expansion of federal powers at the hands of individual states, particularly southern states (an important distinction we’ll return to in an upcoming installment of this series), who argued should have the power to re-imagine what Federalism looked like in the post-World War II world.

And to highlight it, Governor George Wallace of Alabama declared “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” in his 1963 inaugural address. The identical claim made by Alabama in the Civil War. That was too much for President Lyndon Johnson who believed the U.S. was one nation, a single Union as Lincoln put it, and that all citizens of that nation had the same political and human rights no matter where they lived. In response to all the anti-black States’ Rights agitation, President Johnson in 1964 passed the historic Civil Rights Act followed immediately by the incredibly powerful Voting Rights Act in 1965. Together those two federal laws set individual southern states off on a period of prolonged machinations to obstruct national policy by a series of “states’ rights” interventions. The South basically was unwilling to let go of Jim Crow laws and permit universal suffrage for black Americans. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan’s election in 1981 set off the current anti-federalist political environment which has actively sought to weaken the federal government by reducing its control of many federal projects and bringing many others under local state control. The purpose was to create a more plutocratic form of government that would govern best by governing less (note Reagan’s famous quote “The government is the problem”). It unleashed marketplace forces, with greatly reduced oversight (so-called “trickle down” economics made infamous by the completely debunked Laffer Curve) to overtake the government. This process, which continues to the present day, has resulted in the massive, and growing, gap between the top 1-2% of economic society to wield more influence than the bottom 90%. What to do about it?

WENDY GRAGG 805. 453. 3371

Luxury Real Estate Specialist for Nearly 20 Years

Lic #01304471

L.A. hotel opens its doors to the homeless during COVID-19. ommunities around the world are under shelter in place orders, but staying home is not an option for homeless populations. A Los Angeles hotel is hoping to protect the health of its community’s most vulnerable residents by opening their doors to those living on the streets. The hotel, which chose to remain anonymous for privacy and safety concerns, is located in West Los Angeles and its rooms usually go for $400 a night. It began taking in residents the first week of April and by last week, it had filled half its occupancy. The hotel is the first in a series which will collaborate with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to get homeless individuals, specifically at-risk individuals, off the streets and out of overcrowded shelters. The initial plan is to offer housing to homeless populations for at least 90 days. The team will reassess housing need and availability as the pandemic progresses. We shared a story on our website last week about hotels in cities housing nurses and doctors with high exposure to COVID-19. This is another great solution for using existing infrastructure to protect vulnerable populations during the pandemic. Some of the world’s most polluted cities are breathing fresh air once again. The screenshots began to circulate on Delhi WhatsApp groups last week, captioned with varying expressions of disbelief. Having checked the air quality index, most could not believe their eyes. Could it really be that Delhi’s pollution levels now fell into the category of “good”? Delhi is ranked as the most polluted capital in the world, with air pollution sometimes reaching life-threatening levels. But the now two-week-long nationwide lockdown has brought not only the freshest air the capital has breathed in decades but also brought the blue skies. The lockdown silver lining also goes beyond these borders, with toxic megacities such as Bangkok, Beijing, São Paulo, and Bogotá, where varying coronavirus restrictions have been imposed, all reported an unprecedented decline in pollution. This positive environmental impact of the pandemic has also reached Los Angeles. The city is experiencing its longest stretch of good air quality since 1995, as highway traffic has dropped 80 percent throughout the entire state of California. As we continue to battle with the pandemic, these unintended positive outcomes provide a nice glimpse into the benefits of moving our societies into a sustainable future. •MJ The healthy balance of strong federal management of national issues has gone badly out of whack! The coronavirus, or COVID-19, is the ultimate indictment of what can go wrong when the federal government is allowed to be “hollowed out” and is now so hobbled by incompetence that it can’t hold its rightful place in a healthy federalist relationship with the states. One can argue about the incompetence and venality of the Trump Administration’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic, but to understand what really has gone wrong we have to look at the system that elected Trump, even though he lost the popular vote by over 3,000,000 people. The Electoral College, a vestigial artifact of Constitutional compromise made to bring the southern states into the Union by giving them the disproportionate power to affect national elections, clearly needs to be abandoned 157 years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. One other vestigial artifact of the Constitution was the decision to give

Specialist 26 MONTECITO JOURNALLuxury Real Estate“Observation, Reason, Human Understanding, Courage; these make the physician.” ― Martin H. Fischer

two Senators to each state regardless of population. Hence Wyoming with just over 50,000 residents has the same Senate voting power as California with 40,000,000 residents. The original purpose of this approach was also to ensure that slave owning states could exercise abnormally large power at the national level. No one envisioned the intense partisanship that has frozen national policy in the U.S. Senate. Taken together, the Electoral College and Senate apportionment created the amazing situation where two of the last three presidents were elected without a majority victory in the popular vote, and the abdication of oversight in the Senate. Both are a result of the decision to preserve States’ Rights. Both have badly distorted the balance required for a successful Federalism to work. We know the result of the breakdown of Federalism has resulted in the coronavirus pandemic. In our next installment we’ll look at where we are and where we are heading as a nation. Stay tuned… •MJ 23 – 30 April 2020

SURFING (Continued from page 22)

hallmark of this crisis. Are there any issues out there you’re concerned about? The biggest fear I’d like to dispel is the fear that our healthcare systems in Santa Barbara are high-risk areas for coronavirus infection. I have tremendous trust in the infection control practices at Cottage Health and at all of our community health partners’ offices. Do not be afraid of the hospital. Have trust that our hospitals have good systems in place to keep everyone safe and healthy.

Keep Your Other Medical Conditions Well-Controlled

From other sources we know that co-morbidities – the simultaneous presence of two or more chronic diseases in a patient – are one of the biggest factors in COVID related deaths. Is that one reason you’re making a point of regular health care? Absolutely. Keeping your other medical illnesses well-controlled for the next few months is actually as important as avoiding COVID-19. If you have an emergent medical condition, please get the care you need. Stay well-connected to your physicians. Now is not the time to let your diabetes become uncontrolled because you’re afraid to go to your follow-up appointment. We want to make sure we don’t have the experience that happened in New York, where there was an increase in people dying at home without seeking medical care.

risk is really much lower than many of the physicians ahead of us in Italy, China, and elsewhere. Is there a great sense of purpose, being in the middle of a crisis? That kind of energy that you might feel fighting a common cause or even in sports endeavors. Our community has had its share of tragedies. There was an incredible camaraderie that came together after the mudslides and the fires. What’s happening now feels different though because of how long this has been with us. I will say I’ve been humbled by the gratitude and support that I have personally felt from friends, acquaintances, and even people I don’t know. I think the community has propped me up and I know that’s the case for many of my colleagues. I’ve never felt so appreciated and supported in my career. That definitely helps me wake up in the morning and do it again.

The Luxury of Visitors – Cottage Adapts

On a darker side, how do you prepare your patients for difficult procedures and outcomes? These are tremendously difficult situations, no matter what the disease is. What’s unique in this situation is related to the infection-based social distancing measures whereby patients do not have the luxury of visitors. This applies to not just COVID-19 patients, but all patients who have come to the hospital for other procedures, other

I do think in this area most of us have not yet been exposed to this virus. The virus will likely still linger in the community and will do so for months, if not years. There are going to be people exposed, and we may see the numbers go up. How do you prepare yourself for your day? How do you deal with the fact that you and your fellow healthcare workers might get sick? I think we cannot be cavalier with this. We know that unfortunately around the world, healthcare workers in hotspots for this disease have been some of the greatest casualties. But we are facing our local epidemic with far more information than many of our colleagues around the world. I cannot say that either I or any of my friends and colleagues working in the healthcare system in Santa Barbara are perfectly comfortable, or that there is no risk. But I think most people are really up for the task at hand. That applies to the nurses, the patient care techs, the physicians, the resident physicians. Really everyone that keeps the hospital moving has stepped up. The actual 23 – 30 April 2020

problems. It’s tremendously difficult for most patients. Visitors are a critical part of the care of our patients. Visitors help support a patient for better outcomes. Visitors help provide additional information to doctors and nurses. Visitors are our eyes and ears for a lot of the care that we deliver. Many patients have someone at their bedside most of the day. The hospital feels very quiet right now. Has the hospital instituted video chatting or “Zoom meetings” between patients and their families, so they can talk to their mom or their son even if they don’t have the technology themselves? Yes, there’s been a huge shift towards using iPads throughout to let patients connect outside of the hospital, as well as within the COVID units. There’s an iPad in every room. Every

single patient room on the COVID unit has a hospital-issued iPad. We’re using iPads to do some visits with patients as well with physicians and the nurses outside the closed door. What about the stories we hear on certain drugs being a cure? Today we have access to information on the internet long before it has been peer reviewed. The information is flying by, virtually unchecked and unfiltered. There are several examples where there has been a lot of interest in specific treatments based on limited information. Many of them look very promising. There are now a lot of very well-designed studies on these drugs. Even if it eventually is proven to be beneficial, these treatments need to be targeted. We have to clarify for whom is it going to be most beneficial.

She was supposed to run her second Boston Marathon this week, needless to say she won’t be attending. No one will. In terms of our area are we still waiting for the curve to peak? Are you concerned that it might flatten so much that it drags out? I think we’re going to have a more choppy curve, a more bumpy curve. We have not yet seen our peak. There is going to be some relaxation of the social distancing and what Dr. Fauci has predicted we are going to experience. As there is more social interaction, and we start to interact more, there will be people who become infected. The good news is we have tremendous preparation in place and a much better understanding of treatment opportunities. I’m hopeful that the rebound will be of a small magnitude. It’s quite unlikely we will ever have a curve that looks like New York City’s. As an individual how should we think about the increase in social interaction? Many are concerned about being exposed. “Inevitable” is the adjective I would use. It’s inevitable that we’re going to have some relaxation of social distancing at some point. Whether that’s in two weeks, six weeks, or two months. I do think in this area most of us have not yet been exposed to this virus. The virus will likely still linger in the community and will do so for months, if not years. There are going to be people exposed, and we may see the numbers go up.

The Future of Testing

Should it not open because there is not wide-scale testing? I think testing has dramatically

• The Voice of the Village •

expanded in the last few weeks. We are able to test everyone with suspected infection in the hospital and everyone at high risk. We are hopeful that we may have capacity to test most people outside the hospital who have symptoms consistent with COVID-19. We are looking ahead to a time when we can test groups who are high risk such as those in senior living facilities, and those who are preparing for a surgery or for another medical procedure. The impact this is having on the economy and on people’s livelihoods is sobering. The challenge is responding to that pressure safely. What considerations should someone have for their own personal health? Will reopening become an individual health decision? Yes, I would advise people to really make the best decision for themselves. Even if there is an increased opportunity to return to work, to return to school. I would encourage people who have not had this infection, and who may still be vulnerable particularly those over the age of 60 or those with complicated medical problems to continue to take good precautions and keep themselves safe. That involves strict hand hygiene, staying away from people who are sick and staying away from places where there are crowded conditions. Regardless of what changes we see over the coming weeks or months in public policy, I encourage people to remember to make the best decision for themselves and their own situation.

Surfing the Curve

On another note, I’ve heard you’re a really good surfer and terrific athlete. Do you still get to go out and exercise? I run a lot now. Running is my newest athletic career. I was actually scheduled to run the Boston Marathon last Monday. Do you miss being in the surf? Does the coronavirus get into the ocean? I do, but I’m not too worried catching coronavirus surfing. That said, I’ve thought about surfing lately and I have a surfing metaphor for this situation. It’s felt like we spent a number of weeks running around the shore, preparing for a tsunami and building up these walls with a lot of anxiety that the tsunami was going to hit at some point. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve realized that we’ve had some really big sets, not a tsunami, and we’ve handled them well. We certainly had some very sick patients and unfortunately some deaths in the Santa Barbara area. I think there’s still the potential for a bigger set to hit us. But increasingly we’re realizing – it’s likely not going to be the tsunami. •MJ MONTECITO JOURNAL

EDITORIAL (Continued from page 5)

Montecito Community is Stepping up to Keep our Businesses Alive!

Thanks to Zoom (a company I wish I had the foresight to invest in prior to this pandemic) this past Friday morning the Montecito Journal hosted a virtual meeting for members of the Montecito business community to brainstorm ideas to support local business. It is a testament to this community’s desire to help figure this out that close to 100 Montecito business leaders, along with elected and other officials including, Congressman Salud Carbajal, County Supervisor Das Williams, Santa Barbara Mayor Cathy Murillo, and SB City Council member Alejandra Gutierrez, attended the meeting. Also on the call were Montecito Association Executive Director Sharon Byrne, MA Board President and Chief Strategy Officer for Montecito Bank and Trust Megan Orloff, and Montecito Fire Chief Kevin Taylor. As well as Coast Village Association President Bob Ludwick, business owner Kevin Frank, and local realtor Sandy Stahl – to name just a few who’ve stepped up to help lead the effort to support our businesses through this trying time. So how can we – and you – make a difference? On the weekend beginning May 1, the Montecito Journal along with the Montecito business community, the Coast Village Association, the Montecito Association, and the 93108Fund are sponsoring…

The Montecito May Day Cash Mob!

The idea is to provide an easy way for folks to purchase one or more gift certificates for a Montecito business where you know you will want to shop once the quarantine has ended: a restaurant, a clothing store, a jewelry store, a wine shop, an art gallery, a home furnishing boutique, a stationery store, a bookstore, a lingerie shop (you will feel like putting it on again), a nail salon, a beauty salon, a gas station. Here in California we’re doing an excellent job flattening the corona curve, now let’s help fill the cashflow crater for our ailing businesses. All the businesses I just mentioned need your support and now is the time to show your love! By helping infuse our local businesses with cash flow NOW, you help these businesses avoid cratering so they are still there for us when we emerge from quarantine. And I’m not just talking about these establishments. I’m talking about their extended work families as well. On or after Wednesday, April 29, GO TO 93108Fund.org and you will find a pull-down menu from which you can click on any of the businesses you care to support. The money you pay for your gift certificate will be funneled directly to the businesses you identify RIGHT NOW – when they need it most. No fuss no muss. In addition, anyone who buys at least one gift certificate for $500 or more will be invited to a Zoom Celebration on Sunday, May 3, at 7 pm. At this virtual celebration, we will raffle off a few fun prizes for which you are made eligible simply by purchasing a gift certificate for $500 dollars or more. It will be a chance to connect with friends and neighbors over a very worthy cause!

Just a Thought in Case Someone from the County is Reading:

I want to throw out one more idea that has emerged from our ongoing thinking and was well received in our community Zoom call on Friday: It is fortunate that through home delivery and takeout that restaurants have had a way to pivot their businesses during this time. It would be helpful to all of us who are trying to stay safe if County Health officials could devise a simple method to give a COVID-SAFE stamp of approval to restaurants. This might give added assurance to even more customers that it is safe to order takeout, and that restaurants are preparing food to the highest possible current health standards. •MJ

Laughing Matters

man walks into a zoo. The only animal in the entire zoo is a dog. It’s a Shih Tzu.

Send us your best joke, we’ll decide if it’s funny. We can only print what we can print, so don’t blame us. Please send “jokes” to letters@montecitojournal.net

28 MONTECITO JOURNAL

THE RIGHT STUFF (Continued from page 14)

based proteins, non-GMO ingredients and high in antioxidants and without the common allergens. Within six weeks of going on the homemade formula, Katie was putting on weight and keeping it on.

Introducing Kate Farms

By 2011, Kate’s health had improved dramatically and she no longer required frequent visits to the doctors or hospital. After two years and roughly a dozen successful productions, the Lavers introduced their new company, Kate Farms, and their first nutritional shake to the world at the Expo West convention in Anaheim. The shake made history by being the world’s first dairy-free, gluten-free, and soy-free meal replacement shake available on the retail market. “When we launched at Expo West, we were the hit of the show,” Michelle says. “It was like you see in the movies. We had so many orders, we had no idea how we were going to fulfill them.” Before long, Kate Farms’ Komplete shake was available in nationwide chains like Vitamin Shoppe and Sprouts, as well as about 2,000 smaller organic and health food stores across the country.

Enter Brett Matthews

To grow, they needed additional funding and help to run the business. That’s when a neighbor suggested the Lavers speak with angel investor Brett Matthews, a well-known Santa Barbara-area businessman with a reputation for investing in companies where ethics and a higher mission are valued. “We were told that Brett likes to invest in businesses with a pay-it-forward attitude to do good for the world,” says Michelle. “We were introduced over text message and went to lunch with him two days later, and the rest is history.” After a successful business career that began at Procter & Gamble and ended with the 2005 sale of the company he built with his wife, Ginger Salazar, Brett Matthews moved to Montecito. Though he continued to invest in companies, much of his focus was on family and serving on the Montecito Union School Board. But Brett’s life took an unexpected turn in 2012, when one of his children developed an illness that became progressively complicated and perilous. “Unexpectedly, my son was suddenly getting very sick,” says Matthews. “He was sick most of his junior year at Santa Barbara High School, and doc-

MONTECITO JOURNAL’S THOM STEINBECK

CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST #3

e find writing to be the world’s best salve. For our next contest let’s try a limerick about Santa Barbara, isolation, corona, or all three. For those who are not familiar with this form of writing, a limerick is a kind of humorous verse of five lines, in which the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme with each other, and the third and fourth lines, which are shorter, form a rhymed couplet. Send your story by Sunday, April 26 to: letters@montecitojournal.net. We will publish the winning story and award the winning writer with a $125 gift certificate to a local restaurant of our choice for take-out food.

23 – 30 April 2020

A healthy vanillaflavored meal for kids

Michelle and Katie Laver with Hannah Jordan

tors couldn’t figure out his diagnosis. We finally figured out he had an autoimmune disease and his symptoms were triggered by major food allergies. Ginger and I learned about the power of food and plant-based nutrition to heal our son, and I began to think about how to help bring healthy food and nutrition to people with major medical needs.” “I was looking for companies that had an ethos of ‘food as medicine’ to invest in,” said Matthews. “I met Richard, Michelle, and Katie and saw how their formula helped Katie, and how the same ingredients helped my son. Ginger and I invested with an eye towards bringing this amazing, healthy product to many more people with major medical conditions. We asked ourselves, ‘Why can’t the people Brett Matthews, CEO of Kate Farms who need good nutrition the most get access to it?’” To Matthews, the answer was clear. Kate Farms needed to pivot from the retail market to the healthcare, i.e. hospital and homecare markets. “Brett was the perfect man for the job,” Richard Laver says. To lead Kate Farms in a new direction, Matthews became the company’s chief executive officer. He recruited veteran healthcare industry professionals with the expertise and passion it would take to convince others to join the board of directors. One of his first picks for the board was local investor Jeff Jacobs, who cofounded the Harpo Entertainment Group, one of the most successful multimedia brands in the world. “I’d been a friend of Brett’s for a long time,” Jacobs says. “He told me that he was working on something he thought was a pretty extraordinary opportunity. He is a man of high integrity as well as an excellent businessman.” So when Matthews told Jacobs about Kate Farms and asked him to meet the Lavers, Jacobs didn’t hesitate, saying, “I’ll invest and would be honored to join the board.” With Matthews at the helm, Kate Farms was able to craft a strategy to successfully introduce the product to hospitals and home care providers throughout the country. It was heavy lifting since, among other things, Kate Farms had to introduce the product to doctors and dietitians while building a national sales force that could break into an established marketplace dominated by two legacy companies with near-total market share at the time. “The key thing is that when patients and their caregivers – which in a lot of cases are parents – started hearing about a plant-based product that was healthy, they asked their doctors for it. The doctors and nutritionists and dieticians looked at our ingredients and compared them to what was out there,” Jacobs says. “When patients started to thrive, so did Kate Farms.” Matthews set out networking to build his board with industry professionals. A good friend of Jacobs, Robert Zollars, former president of Baxter International’s U.S. distribution and former executive vice president at Cardinal Health, joined the board. Zollars had a friend, Celeste Clark, with a PhD in food science and human nutrition also came on board. Richard and Michelle’s friend Carol Ammon, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and executive joined too. 23 – 30 April 2020

Local Kate Farms investors Chris and Wendy Blau introduced Brett to their family friend, Pete Nicholas, one of the leading healthcare innovators in the country, having founded multi-billion-dollar Boston Scientific, joined the board and became an investor. “As an early investor, I see some parallels between Kate Farms and Boston Scientific,” says Nicholas. “By disrupting the medical device market, Boston Scientific ultimately created better patient outcomes. Likewise, Kate Farms, by bringing superior plant-based medical nutrition to the market, is disrupting what is basically a stagnant category – and driving great patient outcomes too. With this seasoned team and strong culture, I’m confident Kate Farms will continue to change patients’ lives.” Matthews also recruited a strong team to join him to help expand the company, people who are proven industry leaders and who exemplify Kate Farms’core recruitment vision: people with heart who want to serve others and grow a great business. His executive team includes Catherine Hayden as general manager, Pat Gahan as chief sales officer, Dr. Cynthia Ambres as chief medical officer, John Hommeyer as chief experience officer, Casey Bauer as executive vice president for product and operations, and Tom Beecher as chief financial officer. They in turn have built a great team of more than 110 Kate Farmers dedicated to serving people with medical conditions. Says Matthews, “This is a total team effort. It’s exciting to see a group of people come together to truly help people at a time of need while also building a great business.” He continues, “We are also thankful and grateful for our many investors – with amazing value added skills across health care, finance, operations, and executive leadership, who have invested behind truly making a difference.” Making Kate Farms available to all people regardless of socio-economic status is a key principle at Kate Farms. Getting major insurance companies to cover Kate Farms for hospital and home care patients was and is an arduous process, due in part to regulations that vary state to state and the variety of restrictions at the federal and private insurance levels. “We were successful getting covered by Medicare and approved for 49 out of 50 states so far for Medicaid,” Matthews says. “We’re also covered by several states on their Women Infant and Children (WIC) programs as well as over 2,500 private insurance plans.” Kate Farms has a “cross-functional team” including food scientists, registered dietitians, and insurance specialists who handle the rigorous and lengthy multistage process of getting the company’s formulas covered by insurance. “Then the process doesn’t stop once we are approved by insurance plans,” says Mia Elias, director of customer care, “because we then work directly with patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers to get their specific formula covered and delivered. We are on the same team as our patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals.” Elias manages over 20 Customer Care specialists with many graduating from Westmont and UCSB.

• The Voice of the Village •

THE RIGHT STUFF Page 444

MONTECITO JOURNAL

Sheltering in Place

with Les Firestein

Les Firestein has been writing and building since his teens. As a writer Les ran some notable and notorious TV shows (In Living Color) and before that wrote for national newspapers and was the editor of The National Lampoon. Les writes about architecture and design for the Journal. Because thus far no one has stopped him.

Shelf Improvement The perfect re-use for those Restoration Hardware catalogs you feel so guilty about (Art Quote Stack 4 Piece Decorative Book Set, E. Lawrence LTD via wayfair. com)

ith plenty of extra time on my hands thanks to social distancing, I’m doing what millions of Americans are doing: reimagining my home (like without people in it) and especially reimagining my home office. Because quarantine is a great time to fixate on that which you control (or perceive you control). Sketching out a new blueprint, I asked myself: do we really need all these bookshelves? Which naturally lead to the subsequent question: in the Twitter ‘20s, do we really need books? As a conveyance for knowledge, books have had a recent coronavirus surge, but a generally bad run. For example the Mueller Report, as we all know, was quickly remaindered and went largely unread even by jurists.

The Mueller tome was the Patriot Act redux – something few read till after its relevance had already passed. A Google search confirms that in the short-attention-span Internet Age, long-term book readership is down. Though perhaps ironically book sales are actually way up for a new cottage industry that treats books purely as decoration. Specifically, books are finding new life the same way CDs and DVDs found new life as beer coasters. Not their intended purpose but, hey, beggars can’t be choosers. Everyone you’d suspect has weighed in on books-as-décor and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Martha Stewart favors bookshelf styling – as do the readers

Oh, the places you’ll go! At least on your bookshelf. (Vintage Hotel Label Decorative Book, E. Lawrence LTD via wayfair.com)

of Reader’s Digest. That’s a pretty wide socio-economic swath. Meaning that in the world of home decor, bookshelf styling has become accepted practice. Functional bookshelves, on the other hand, are pretty much “out.” Joanna Gaines of Magnolia fame, who made farm fashionable again, says she loves using books in home design. Gaines says books “make the perfect pedestals for candles.” Really? So the perfect base for an open flame… is a dried out stack of paper? Smokey the Bear might not approve. Gaines elaborates that another thing she loves about books is they “look great on shelving.” Who would have guessed the perfect companion for bookshelves… would be books? It’s almost as if they were made for each other. Sprouting up all over are websites dedicated only to “shelfies” like #bookstagram and, please act surprised, Gwyneth Paltrow makes use of a “bibliophile to the stars” named Thatcher Wine who has given an actual Ted Talk on the value and pleasures of books… but not as literature, rather as décor. Mr. Wine, in fact, has a very pretty website named “Juniper Books,” where he opines the perfect ratio of shelfology

is two thirds books to one third things, although Magnolia definitely cautions against “overcrowding.” Other websites get much more in the weeds about the spacing of books and objects and their commensurate critical geometries, not to mention the importance of staying consistent within a color palette. Executed perfectly your bookshelf should look like something by Joseph Cornell meets a monochrome construction by Louise Nevelson. A deeper internet search reveals that DIYers can buy books by the foot or by the yard or by the pound. One can specify only Japanese books if that’s your preference. In fact the Japanese even have a word Tsundoku which is the art of buying books and never reading them. Who knew that was an “art”? And here I thought I was just lazy. Furthermore, as you curate your book covers, you can specify hardback or soft, linen covers or leather, and choose your vintage of book as if a fine wine. Books can have their original covers, or be re-covered to look like and say whatever you want (nonsensical Latin is way popular on Wayfair). Of course your books can also say nothing at all – and even face Neutrals are popular for those who like their books in a scene but not heard (photo by Juniper Books www.juniperbooks.com)

30 MONTECITO JOURNAL

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – William Shakespeare

23 – 30 April 2020

This seems to be wallpaper. Even better – nothing to dust. (Secret Bookcase Instant Library Wallpaper by Spoonflower. com)

backwards which is now a “thing.” Book organization has become much easier now that what’s between the covers has become immaterial. Neutrals are literally flying off the shelves but rose gold and silver lamé, i.e. “glam” (or glamé), are popular too. You can also pick titles in a preferred font like “deco,” NYTimes helvetica which has sort of a retro industrial chic. And of course there’s the always popular Mid Century which today is

approximately 3’ x 3’ hence the word “nook” might be more appropriate. If one of Chairish’s vintage books is a dictionary someone there might want to crack it open. Carefully so as not to ruin the spine. Chairish and other sites also sell bundles of books they call “deconstructed” which, when you and I grew up, meant damaged. It’s the same slightof-word that turned used cars into “pre-owned.” These books definitely

Sansum Clinic is open and has adapted to continue to serve our patients while managing the impact of this novel coronavirus pandemic. Our primary care, specialty care and urgent care providers are dedicated to helping you receive the healthcare you need. In an effort to comply with Public Health requests, we are trying to reserve in-clinic appointments for patients who need to be seen in person at this time. If you need to be seen, we are here for you. We are rescheduling many appointment types to Telehealth visits by video and phone so patients can see a doctor from the safety of their own homes. We can help you determine if a Telehealth visit is medically appropriate for you. Please call (805) 681-7500 or visit telehealth.sansumclinic.org

The Japanese even have a word Tsundoku which is the art of buying books and never reading them. Who knew that was an “art?” And here I thought I was just lazy. known as “Mad Men” font. A really popular trend on Pinterest is “curating” books by color, especially in the “hombre” color pattern, as if styled by Billie Eilish. Black is the most common book cover and therefore the least expensive, the going rate for noir is about 13 bucks a foot. On the other hand, trendy colors (sea foam, robin’s egg) and “colors of the year” as marketed by paint companies go for much more money – 80 bucks a foot and up. Some of the more interesting book arrangements I saw for sale were “oat & melon,” pumpkin spice (it isn’t just for Starbucks anymore), and “buttercream” which looked very Anthropologie and for which the website Chairish is asking $275 for 21 inches of books – but in all fairness, the books come bound in a frayed piece of actual twine, which at that price, presumably once adorned the end of Ben Franklin’s original kite. Other popular Chairish configurations are a “chocolate wall of books” for $849 (before shipping) or a denim wall of books also for $849. Be forewarned: a “wall of books” only means 10 linear feet... so “wall” really means 23 – 30 April 2020

look more Curaded than curated. Speaking of curated, when buying used books in bulk, who’s doing the curation? This is another question that came up in my 24/7 self-isolation. What if no one’s screening the books, and I install my chocolate wall of books without so much as taking a gander at what’s inside? Owning unopened books, pretty as they may be with their fine linen covers and gilt lettering, seems like a slippery slope. What if the NSA, with a tip from my eavesdropping Alexa and an assist from the not-read-before-it-was-passed Patriot Act, discerns I’m a threat to national security and pays me a visit while I’m out on the prowl for TP and home-brewed Purell. What if the authorities discover amongst the books I never cracked, some wacky anti-gov manifesto, cloaked behind a silver lamé binding as if… I was hiding it? Suddenly I’m being flown to Guantanamo, and about to reenact the worst scenes from Zero Dark Thirty, as I await trial for possessing hate manifesti I didn’t even know I owned. The good news is I’ll have lots of time to read. And arrange my books by color. Or should I arrange them by size? •MJ

Urgent Care at 215 Pesetas Lane is open daily from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm for unplanned medical conditions. Text #COVID to (805) 681-7500 for immediate information about COVID-19 symptoms, Telehealth appointments, and more. We are grateful for the generosity and appreciation from our community, and for the love and support shown toward our healthcare workers. We are taking many precautionary measures to protect our employees and our patients so we can continue to offer personalized care with the peace of mind our community deserves. This has been our mission for nearly 100 years and it remains the same today.

• The Voice of the Village •

To learn more, visit sansumclinic.org

Thank You. MONTECITO JOURNAL

People of Montecito

MISCELLANY (Continued from page 6)

by Megan Waldrep

Justine Hamilton

Q. How are You Holding up Through Quarantine? A. As a girl from Iowa, I am channeling my inner Laura Ingalls Wilder (though with an Instacart app), by keeping it simple with a homestead vibe. I also look for ways to keep it light during this heavy time. I do that by creating with what I have here at home. The house can start to feel a little “pandemic plain,” so I make very simple floral arrangements from my yard that bring a little life into our constantly occupied, often messy home. I also feel zero guilt about having a glass of wine on a Monday, even if it might be Tuesday or Wednesday… who knows. On a Saturday night, I’ll put on a pair of sequin joggers, dim the lights, turn up the music, shuffle the Uno cards and pretend like we are on a family vacation in Las Vegas. My neighbor Josie and I have a beautiful barter going. She is 81 and shouldn’t be going to the market. I do her grocery and Instacart shopping and she supplies me with fresh produce from her beautiful garden. I get veggies, she gets chips, salsa, and ice cream – win-win! My main tip is to STAY

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Shimin Shines Tonia Shimin edits art book on her late father

HOME! Protect you, your family and the Josies in your life. What is your favorite memory of living in Montecito? I can’t say that I have a favorite memory of living in Montecito because they are all so wonderful, but I do have a favorite feeling, which is the small town, community connectedness of it all. We saw this especially after the debris flow in such a beautiful way. Even now with social distancing, we wave to neighbors as we pass them from the other side of the street. At Butterfly, we watch sunsets with friends in our own cars. We drop off food at someone’s door, just because. We see each other, we know each other, we help each other, we are one. We are the luckiest people on the planet. •MJ www.thehamiltonco.com

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32 MONTECITO JOURNAL

costs of food inventories and other necessary supplies, while the Unity Gift Shoppe and Furniture Annex on State Street, which generate income of around $17,000 a month, have had to close. Another fundraiser, a production of Oliver with Janet Adderley’s Youth Ensemble Theatre, which was expected to generate $25,000, has also been cancelled. “Our community’s needs are soaring in a way we’ve not seen in our lifetimes,” adds Tom. “And the worst part is that many of these newly jobless are our friends, the people we encounter in our everyday lives – hotel workers, valets, waiters, teachers’ aides, nurses, hairdressers, cleaning people, gardeners, among so many others.”

CA License # 0773817

A new book, The Art of Symeon Shimin, featuring the paintings, drawings and writings of the late Russian-born Jewish artist, who died in New York in 1984 at the age of 82, has just been published. The work includes reproductions of more than 70 works, his autobiography Metamorphosis, and essays by Independent writers Charles Donelan and Josef Woodard, edited and curated by his Santa Barbara-based daughter Tonia Shimin. Shimin, whose work was exhibited at Manhattan’s Whitney Museum, illustrated more than 50 children’s books during his lifetime, starting in 1950. Two that he authored in 1973 and 1974, Gorilla, Gorilla and A New Baby a New Life, won two Christopher Awards. He also painted large scale posters for Hollywood films, including creating the iconic poster for Gone with the Wind in 1936. The same year he was awarded a contract by the Public Works Arts Project to paint a mural, Contemporary Justice and The Child, in Washington’s Department of Justice Building, which took four years to complete and can still be seen today. Ellen Goes All In Montecito TV talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is donating $1 million and offering one fan the chance of a lifetime to help charities after being

“Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.” ― Hippocrates

challenged to go “All In” by actor-activist friend Leonardo DiCaprio. After the Oscar winner offered donating fans the chance to have a walk-on role in his upcoming movie Killers of the Flower Moon, Ellen, 62, matched his pledge. As well as $1 million donation to coronavirus relief efforts, including Meals on Wheels, No Kid Hungry, and America’s Food Fund, the multi-Emmy winner promised to give one fan the chance to co-host her Warner Bros. Burbank-based show. “I have been devastated by seeing all the people lined up waiting for food,” says Ellen. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be sitting for hours and hours waiting to get food, and hoping there’s even going to be any left by the time you get there. “It’s heartbreaking and overwhelming... I’m really hoping that this inspires anyone who’s in a position to help because there’s a lot of need out there.” Blast from the Past Milt Larsen keeps himself occupied (photo by Priscilla)

Milt Larsen, who just celebrated his 89th birthday, and his wife Arlene have closed their Magic Castle Cabaret near the Bird Refuge as well as the historic Magic Castle in Hollywood during the ongoing pandemic. Milt tells me has been spending the time in quarantine watching his extensive video collection, especially the Hollywood Palace shows from the ‘60s and ‘70s. “Stars like Jack Benny and Bing Crosby would do performances and each show would feature some of the greatest variety acts available,” says Milt. “There were acrobats, dancing elephants, standup comics and dancers. It’s like being in a time machine watching people like Benny introducing a very young Liza Minnelli.” In the ‘50s Milt started working on TV’s Truth or Consequences show, produced by Ralph Edwards. “I got to know many of the people working on the project. It was a different time and era, but I’m glad I found these DVDs to enjoy the amazing talent on display.” Flower Power Westerlay Orchids in Carpinteria is showing its support for commu23 – 30 April 2020

nity members on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company has just announced its 100,000 Orchid Challenge where they are offering a selection of more than 100,000 donated and deeply discounted orchids to show their gratitude and support. To date Westerlay, which ships more than three million plants annually, has donated more than 20,000 to institutions like USC, and plans to deliver 5,000 more this week. Founder Toine Overgaag says: “We need the community’s help to reach this goal, so we are looking for significant financial sponsorships to help cover partial costs while ensuring the livelihood of our 120 employees and the survival of our business.” If you care to join the challenge, call 805-705-5341 or email Overgaag at Tovergaag@WesterlayOrchids.com. A blooming good idea... Viral Video Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, mesmerizing in his Music for Hope live concert from the deserted Duomo di Milano, has broken world records. The blind opera singer’s Easter Sunday performance has become the biggest live streamed classical music event of all time, with a combined 35 million people viewing the 30-minute concert. The historic event reached more than 2.8 million peak concurrent views, making it one of the biggest musical live stream performances of all time and the largest simultaneous audience for a classical live stream in YouTube history. The video received more than 28 million views across the globe in its first 24 hours. “It was an immeasurable honor and privilege to lend my voice to the prayers of millions of people gathered in a single embrace – a small, great miracle of which the whole world was the protagonist and which confirms my optimism about the future of our planet,” says Bocelli. Contemplating the End Julia LouisDreyfus mulls final chapter (photo by Neil Grabowsky)

Montecito actress Julia LouisDreyfus’ battle against breast cancer inspired her commitment to fight climate change. The Seinfeld co-star, 59, says her “near death experience” made her think about the impact she wanted to 23 – 30 April 2020

make on the world. “Once you’ve faced a near-death experience like that you do begin to realize that at some point you’re going to be out of here,” she tells People. “We all are. So how best to spend my remaining time on this planet? “I never thought I was immortal, but you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the end of your life.” Morale and Matrimony Queen Elizabeth’s granddaughter, Prince Beatrice, 31, wants to boost Britain’s morale during the coronavirus pandemic. Beatrice, who has just cancelled her wedding next month to millionaire Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, 37, at the Chapel Royal in St. James’s Palace, given the small number of guests the couple would have been allowed, now wants the nuptials to take place next year with a much larger morale boosting event, like her 30-year-old sister, Princess Eugenie’s wedding to wine merchant Jack Brooksbank, 34, in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Stay tuned... Stay Inside Former TV talk show titan Oprah Winfrey has warned African Americans to take the coronavirus outbreak seriously as “it is ravaging our community.” “It is important for black people to understand pre-existing conditions like diabetes and asthma put them at greater risk if they contract the virus,” Montecito’s most famous resident warned. Oprah, 66, also voiced concern for her own health and said she was staying indoors at her East Valley Road estate because she suffered pneumonia last year and her lungs “never fully cleared,” she told CBS This Morning. Family Affair Alan Parsons reflects (photo by Priscilla)

My item on the death of the 7th Marquess of Bath from the coronavirus at 87 prompted a response from Santa Barbara record producer Alan Parsons. Alex Thynn’s father, Henry, was married to Alan’s aunt, Virginia Parsons, his second marriage. “They had a daughter Silvy, so she is a genuine cousin,” says Alan, who has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards and worked on the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark

Side of the Moon albums. “I knew Alex reasonably well through family gatherings, but had not seen him since moving to the U.S. in 1999. “Henry would have pop concerts at the Wiltshire estate in the ‘60s and started the whole Lions of Longleat phenomenon.”

Remembering Peter On a personal note, I remember dashing Yale-graduate Peter Beard, the legendary wildlife photographer, who has died at the age of 82 after going missing from his Montauk, Long Island, home.

What Happens in Vegas Santa Barbara warbler Katy Perry could be heading to Sin City. The former Dos Pueblos High student, 35, hinted she could be following in the footsteps of Sir Elton John and Celine Dion with a lengthy residency at a Las Vegas hotel during a pre-American Idol Facebook Q&A session. Although all residencies in the gambling mecca are on hiatus, it was reported last year the “Roar” songstress had toured the Colosseum at Caesars Palace with her entourage. Gwyn’s Gown Montecito actress Gwyneth Paltrow is auctioning off the Calvin Klein gown she wore at the 72nd Academy Awards in 2000. Although the 47-year-old Oscar winner says the silvery dress has “sentimental value,” she is donating the glamorous outfit to raise funds for people affected by the coronavirus. “It’s very end-of-the-‘90s, which is back in style, so I thought it would be a good one to donate,” says Gwynnie. Amazon Soars While others have been suffering economically from the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, continues to add astronomically to his fortune. In just one day last week Bezos, 56, saw his wealth increase by $6.4 billion to $138 billion amid surging online orders during the quarantine lockdown with his company now worth $1.1 trillion after its shares hit a record high. Angel Food Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have delivered food to Los Angeles residents living with critical illness. The tony twosome, who moved to the Big Orange last month, volunteered with the charity Project Angel Food to deliver parcels to vulnerable people in the city. Richard Ayoub, executive director, says the couple contacted the charity after learning its drivers were “overloaded” and needed more support as they try and feed people during quarantine. The duo followed strict social distancing guidelines, wearing masks and gloves while being six feet apart from members of the public. “If I’d known I would have worn my tiara,” joked one recipient.

• The Voice of the Village •

Photographer Peter Beard R.I.P. (photo by Peter Beard)

Peter, heir to two great fortunes in tobacco and railroads, was a fixture on the New York social scene, where I first met him at Studio 54, and also a had a rustic home near the former ranch of Danish writer Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, outside Nairobi, Kenya, where he photographed many of the wild animals, which sold at astoundingly high prices at auction, some going for more than $500,000. He was also good friends with my Manhattan neighbor Andy Warhol and rocks stars Lou Reed and Mick Jagger. Peter also had well publicized relationships with Jackie O’s sister, Lee Radziwill, Candice Bergen, an old friend Barbara Allen, and supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, to whom he was married from 1982 to 1986. He also discovered the supermodel Iman in Nairobi, who became the wife of the late rocker David Bowie. A glamorous life in the spotlight, but a terribly sad end, suffering as he did with dementia. Sightings have been suspended during the coronavirus, given the social distancing edict from California Governor Gavin Newsom. They will return when the restrictions have been lifted. Pip! Pip! – and be safe. Readers with tips, sightings and amusing items for Richard’s column should e-mail him at richardmin eards@verizon.net or send invitations or other correspondence to the Journal. To reach Priscilla, e-mail her at pris cilla@santabarbarseen.com or call 805969-3301. •MJ MONTECITO JOURNAL

Real Estate

723 Lilac Drive - $2,800,000

by Mark Ashton Hunt

Mark and his wife, Sheela Hunt, are real estate agents. His family goes back nearly 100 years in the Santa Barbara area. Mark’s grandparents – Bill and Elsie Hunt – were Santa Barbara real estate brokers for 25 years.

Best Buys SOLD!

hile there are many listings from “pre-stay-at-home order” days, and there are some few new listings on the market, I thought it might be a good time to focus on what has been selling here in Montecito since the stay at home order fell into place. Of course, many of the sales between March 15 and April 15 of this year were in escrow prior to the stay-at-home order, but nonetheless went through and closed escrow. Additionally, homes are going into escrow in recent weeks, yet we are off overall in the number of homes in the pending escrow pipeline, which is understandable. There are as of this writing, only 13 homes in escrow. More common would be 20 or more per month in a normal, non-COVID-19, non-debris flow March/April. One thing that did stand out in my look at the 11 closed escrow sales between March 15 and April 15, 2020, was that most sales had shown a significant reduction in price from last asking price to final sale price. Also, there was one off-market sale (off-market sale is the sale of a home that was not offered to the public on the market, but negotiated behind the scenes and then recorded for the public record basically). I have noted more of this type of transaction in the recent year than in years past. Below are five of the 11 closed escrow sales that were recorded in the Multiple Listing Services (MLS), Montecito 93108 zip code, between March 15 to April 15, 2020, ($31,000,000+/- was paid for those 11 properties). For those who like statistics, last year, 2019 for the same time frame, there were 16 reported sales with a total dollar amount of approximately $41,000,000.

This 5,000+/- square foot home was recently listed at $2,975,000, and last year at $3,300,000. Someone is moving into or remodeling a home on Lilac Drive and is in at a purchase price amounting to $550 per square foot in the Montecito Union School District. Just sayin’…

636 Oak Grove Drive - $2,050,000

Recent Sales in Montecito 2303 Bella Vista Drive - $4,250,000

This is a sprawling 4.5+/- acre estate with guest house, koi ponds, pool, spa and commanding ocean views. The list price at sale time was $5,150,000, down from $5,650,000 original asking price. The mostly single-level main residence is separated into two wings and the residence is anchored by a formal entry and large sunken living room for entertaining with 20-foot folding doors and dramatic ocean views at the center of the home. There is a total of 6,500 square feet of living space as advertised, room to roam inside and out and the home is within the Montecito Union School District.

903 Alston Road - $3,450,000

This was an off-market sale for an ocean view home on a .61-acre lot that last sold in 2011 for $1,575,000. I have included the image that was posted in the property sale information in the MLS but I have no idea if it is representative of the home or condition. Off-market sales make it difficult to use those properties in comparing to other sales prices as agents and appraisers do not have access or information thus not the ability to assess these homes for their specific value.

34 MONTECITO JOURNAL

This single-level home with guest house on 1.3 acres, in the Montecito Union School District, was originally priced at $2,750,000 and was reduced to $2,400,000 before selling for the final price of $2,050,000. The main house with three bedrooms and three bathrooms includes four fireplaces. There is a detached studio plus two separate two-car garages. Interestingly this home closed escrow for nearly $2,700,000 back at the height of the market in 2006.

1032 Fairway Road - $972,000 This is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo that was listed at $1,070,000 and I was surprised it did not sell sooner, being just two blocks from Butterfly Beach. This corner unit has a fireplace and mountain views. There is a common area pool and spa, lush landscaped grounds, and a parking garage.

•MJ

For information on the current Montecito and Santa Barbara Real Estate market, please contact me directly, Mark@Villagesite.com or call/text 805-698-2174. Additionally, please view my website, www.MontecitoBestBuys.com, from which this article is based.

“People pay the doctor for his trouble; for his kindness they still remain in his debt.” ― Seneca

23 – 30 April 2020

Village People by Nicholas Schou

Tommy Delgado and Hunter Self of J&S East Valley Garage

ack in the day, if you needed your car worked on for whatever reason, you took it to the one place in town that could do the repair job: your full-service neighborhood gas station. And for several decades in the past century, J&S East Valley Garage on East Valley Road was exactly such a spot. Originally founded in 1919 under a different name that is now lost to generations gone by, the garage got its current name in 1962, courtesy of the initials of previous owners Jay Roach and his father in law, Smitty, who originally bought the place from Elroy Blocker. “Elroy and Jay partnered up,” says current owner Hunter Self. “Jay passed away in 2012, but his wife still lives on the property next to us and is our humble landlord.” Self, for his part, started working at the garage in 2001, when he was a student at Dos Pueblos High School and Jay let him sweep the floors and shadow the mechanics. “Jay let me work my way up,” adds Self, who Tommy Delgado, Hunter Self, and Eleanor subsequently attended Santa Barbara City College’s automotive program. “Since then, I’ve been building motors, doing full machine service as well as custom machine welding.” Although the nature of the shop’s business has evolved over the years, it retains the antique charm of an old-time gas station and garage. “We started as a full-service repair shop,” Self says. “In the 1960s, you could drop off your car and get everything done. A garage like this would build motors and do everything from resurfacing heads to overhauling engines, and we still do all that.” Because of COVID-19 concerns, one of Self’s welder/fabricators who is caring for a family member with a compromised immune system is staying home for now. But on a recent morning, Self’s other main employee, Tommy Delgado, was busy at work underneath one of a trio of vehicles currently being fixed inside the garage. “We’re taking precautions,” Self adds. “As much as we love hanging out with everybody and shaking hands, we are not doing that. And we spray down everything: keys, credit cards, our desk, and I have a pen holder full of clean pens.” Although J&S East Valley Garage has a dedicated local clientele – it would be fair to say the demographic tilts heavily to older men with a penchant for racing classic cars –many of the shop’s customers are out of town. “We have an eclectic mix of cars coming in from around the country and all over the world,” Self says, adding that he is currently building a twin-turbo engine for Jesse James of West Coast Choppers fame. As a side hobby, Self serves as crew chief for a land speed racing team with driver Arley Langlo; the team, J&S Racing, has competed at Utah’s Bonneville Flats and El Mirage, where the current record for blown fuel streamliners is 423 and 304 mph respectively. “That’s my recreation,” Self says. “A lot of my market is race car stuff. I try to keep my niche to that. The dealership model just doesn’t work for me. We’ve been taking it back old school here,” he explains. “Everything that everyone else is afraid to work on: That’s what I love doing.”

at Sansum Clinic

COVID-19 is not stopping the critical cancer care we know our community needs. As we manage the impact of this coronavirus pandemic, the health and safety of Ridley-Tree Cancer Center’s patients and our staff is of utmost importance to us. We know those facing cancer have unique concerns. This is why we have taken precautionary measures like screening everyone at our entrance, limiting visitors, providing masks and protective gear for our team members, employing additional cleaning services and enacting hygiene and social distancing guidelines, so we can continue to offer the personalized cancer care and the peace of mind our patients deserve. This is our mission and it remains the same today. Our oncologists are conducting many Telehealth virtual visits by phone and video while patients stay safely at home. Your provider can determine if a Telehealth visit is medically-appropriate for you.

Ridley-Tree Cancer Center and its compassionate team remains dedicated to guiding and supporting our patients. Our commitment to operate as the premier regional resource for the diagnosis, management and prevention of cancer is as secure and steadfast as ever. To learn more, visit ridleytreecc.org

Thank you! In partnership with

J&S East Valley Garage is located at 1610 East Valley Road. (805) 969-4147. Open 8 am - 5 pm, Monday-Thursday, 8 am - noon, Friday. •MJ 23 – 30 April 2020

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

NEW NORMAL (Continued from page 24)

and Loquita know by name, by face, by smile and by their warmth. It was devastating. “I would be lying if I didn’t tell you this is by far the most difficult thing I’ve been through,” Ms. Villanueva admits. “When the governor basically shut down all dining and restaurants, the first thing we did was figure out how we take care of our employees.” Naturally for a restaurateur, taking care of her employees started with food. Food is one of the hidden perks of restaurant working, those little meals before or after work straight from the kitchen, that nurtures and replenishes the staff. “We started a free grocery pantry where employees can come,” Sherry recounts. “We basically set it up like a grocery store. There’s a produce section, a protein section, and a dairy section and they just come and take what they need.” Acme has funded and run the pantry multiple times a week since March 17, two days after layoffs began, then recently, as funds ran out, launched a GoFundMe campaign. “We’ve raised about $35,000 so far,” Ms. Villanueva remarked. “A lot of our regular guests, just people we work with in the community, people we’ve supported through nonprofit events in the past, reached out to us. There’s a silver lining when the community comes forward in generous ways, we would have never imagined.” The Villanueva family is no stranger to charity work. They have completed more than thirty service trips together to places in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Bolivia, and Zambia. Being on the receiving end of charity is a new experience.

Pivoting to New Ideas

Restaurants are nimble. All of them in one way or another have tried to pivot. Takeout has been offered as a solution to the hospitality shutdown, but it’s far from perfect for some establishments. “We’re just not a takeout restaurant. It’s very misleading,” Ms. Villanueva explained. “There’s this idea out in the general public, that we can just become a grocery store and sell bags of flour. But we didn’t design our menu to travel. We designed it as an experience.” Some restaurants in Santa Barbara, like Barbareño and Handlebar Roasters, are pivoting to working as grocery stores and have had some success. “I think the ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control Board) was great by saying you can sell off premise cocktails,” Ms. Villanueva said in support of these efforts. “That was a huge opportunity for many bars and restaurants to add a bottle of wine or add a

36 MONTECITO JOURNAL

Welcome to the Wild West, Acme’s new Holbrooke Hotel in Grass Valley, California

People Are Social Animals Ms. Villanueva isn’t afraid of hard work and being hands on

batched cocktail with their order. It helps them get a better check average, which aids their survival. Restaurants right now are not looking to be profitable; they’re looking to not die.”

Supplying County Food Banks

Acme tried takeout for a little while, but it didn’t work for them. Instead they started investigating other areas. They decided Food Banks were underserved. It was a cause the company and their employees could get behind. “We’re redirecting a small subset of our team to a prepared food prep program for the Food Bank,” Ms. Villanueva explains. “We’re making ready to eat, ready to heat up, completely prepared and packaged dinners. They are going out to all Food Bank partners. The first delivery happened last Monday.” The Food Banks are purchasing the meals from Acme at near cost. It’s not a profit center, but it puts about eight people back to work. The elephant in the room is the future of restaurants. Does it include half capacity and servers in masks? Ms. Villanueva took another pause, as she flew down the highway. “It’s insane from a business point of view,” she remarked. “Can’t we be more creative? We’re in an unprecedented crisis, so it takes unprecedented creativity to get out of it.” It goes without saying Ms. Villanueva has ideas to propose. “I’m driving to Santa Barbara now to meet with the City Council,” she begins. “If we need to rework furniture to maintain distancing with 50% less furniture, that’s fine. There are creative ways to put employees in masks and add hand washing stations. Public health safety is going to have to be on top of the restaurant experience. But people want to stay safe and go out. I am asking to expand my dining room into my parking area, so that I can place more seats.”

Every day sees another change. How operators can stay in business with new restrictions is a big question, and many of them will not. What’s clear is that the next six months isn’t the future, it’s a transition to the future. “People are social animals. People like to have fun. Nothing brings people together better than food. I think we will get back to a place, even if it’s after a vaccine, where people have the confidence to be close to one another.” Getting from here to there is the challenge. The Federal Government Stimulus programs that were released did not help restaurants in the short run. The PPP program was designed to help small businesses of which the restaurant industry is the largest employer but loaning to pay payroll while mandating closure doesn’t compute with a cashflow business. “They want me to bring my employees back, hire them, but I’m not allowed to open,” Ms. Villanueva explains. “By the time I am allowed to open, the money is gone, and we’ve had no income. It doesn’t make sense.” Restaurateurs are looking for the Federal Government to be in partnership with independent restaurants. There are many levels of challenges for hospitality businesses that have to be thought through. “I feel the same way about the city of Santa Barbara,” Ms. Villanueva added. It keeps coming back to people. When her employees were furloughed, Ms. Villanueva went directly to the City Council right after the shutdown. “I tried on behalf of my employees to help the City understand what’s really going on,” she recounts. “For two weeks, the unemployment system was so overwhelmed it crashed. It was impossible to even file a claim. So, you’re talking about workers, who like many, live paycheck to paycheck, who were concerned that unemployment payments were not ever going to reach them.”

Need for City Partnership

No matter what the past issues have been, no matter what partisanship or

“Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.” – Charles Dickens

territorial matters have interfered, it’s common sense that every sector of our community and society need to collaborate and work together. “Traditionally there’s been a lot of acrimony between business owners and the city,” Ms. Villanueva concludes. “I think business owners want to change that and come to the table with the City. The business community is hungry to work with the City, desperate I would say, to look for partnership on many levels.” There is little doubt the time is now for rules to change for the sake of the public, for the sake of businesses and, in the end, for the sake of the City. Will those rules change without consultation or with consultation? Where will the ideas come from? Other counties and cities have already moved toward interdisciplinary, collaborative approaches with local business, local health officials, universities, and economic development experts. These approaches are needed to keep cities vibrant and economically viable, and in a crisis even more so. As other communities rise out of this shutdown, the question becomes: will Santa Barbara pull together and remain competitive with cities where there has traditionally been far greater cooperation?

People Love Each Other

It’s predicted by some health experts that we’ll never shake hands again. Restaurants in many ways are at the forefront of reinventing how humans will interact with each other. “People love each other. Humans are social creatures, physical creatures. Everyone’s as worried about their neighbor as they are about themselves. I would say the “new normal” is a more enlightened normal. People will want to be together, to celebrate and be close. We’re still socially connected creatures who love to be together… I always tell my staff, you can do hard things. That’s my mantra,” she added. If anyone can do hard things, it’s Sherry Villanueva. But like everyone else, she’s got her work cut out for her. •MJ 23 – 30 April 2020

SPIRITUALITY (Continued from page 11)

experience in the practices. “It’s a very senior group of trainers,” Mackenzie said. Eight different trainers will be presenting and teaching courses over the weekend, each with their own unique take and approach to NVC and its applications. Sorrow will offer his “Surprising Purpose of Anger” course, as well as “Hearing and Saying No” and “Four Ways to Respond to Hard to Hear Messages.” Perennially popular presenters Jim and Jori Manske will bring back “The Zero Step” plus “9 Skills for Navigating Conflict” and the take-it-home course known as “From Now On: 3 Strategies to Integrate NVC identified by Marshall Rosenberg.” Mackenzie herself will offer Friday night’s opening session, “The Heart of Compassion: An Introduction to NVC,” as well as the very topical class “Thriving in the Midst of Change,” geared toward coping with the coronavirus crisis. “It’s a mini-version of a retreat my colleague and I offer all over the world on the concept of greeting change with grace and confidence,” she explained. “Any kind of change – from divorce or retirement, to moving, getting married or dealing with COVID has similar characteristics over the beginning, middle and end. Each brings up aspects of emotions. When we know and understand them we can navigate with more grace and ease. I’ll talk about the stages and how to navigate, specifically COVID. We’re in it, but we’re not sure it’s even the middle yet.” Similarly, all three of Sarah Peyton’s offerings are geared toward handling what arises for people during the pandemic. “Clear Old Traumas That Make Quarantine Harder Than It Has To Be,” “Reactivity In Tight Quarters: 3 Tools For Transformation,” and “Hearing and Releasing Our Addictions and Compulsions” each take on different aspects of pressures that can come up as we’re cooped up for long periods. Lorraine Aguilar’s three classes, sequentially focusing on working with fear, resilience, and acting with kindness are also aimed at raising awareness and choice as the pandemic progresses. In more general terms, Jared Finkelstein’s “Naturalizing NVC: Form and Essence” helps to translate the formal expression of NVC – which can sound static, formulaic, and even disconnecting into something more natural that brings only the necessary amount of form to connect compassionately with others. Whichever courses one chooses, the information and experience is meant to be more rewarding and interactive than the typical one-way webinar. “We’re trying to make it very much like what you would experience in the actual workshop,” Mackenzie said. “Almost all of the sessions will have their own breakout rooms so people can interact in smaller groups, twos or threes, to practice the principles and then come back and give feedback or discuss their experiences.” In other words, the focus is on connection. Just like NVC itself. (The 13th Annual NVC Conference takes place online April 24-26. Visit http:// nvctraining.com/media/_2020/nvca/NVC-conference/index.html for information and registration.)

form for each session, usually different people at each meeting. “I keep hearing things like ‘this has saved my life’ or you’ve put some normalcy in my day’ or ‘it’s given me a touchstone to look forward to,’” she said. “I think it’s because so many people are alone in their homes.” Or they have extended families, which can also put a lot of pressure on you, like having kids you now have to homeschool, she noted. “How do you manage relationships, and come from a place of love and compassion when your kids or parents are driving you crazy 24 hours a day? That’s why I’m trying to give people cues and tips to manage your own nervous system and create resilience with relaxation, mindfulness, and meditation and also provide ways of communicating, using emotional intelligence and being compassionate with yourself.” The meditations have grown in popularity because people are getting the (virtual) hands-on that they need, McLean said. “We talk about real things, such sadness and the myriad of other emotions that occur, and how to manage your attention so you don’t get stuck in a cyclical thought pattern. We deal with whatever you’re experiencing.” But even more than the meditations themselves, her online audience is becoming a community, she said. “That’s the most amazing thing. They have started to talk to each other, message each other, send each other presents. They show up into the Zoom room early and start chatting. It’s really very sweet.” The variety of people who show up on the calls has spanned from all across America as well as other countries, creating a virtual spiritual community for those who may not have one in real life – including people from “Southern ‘Red’ states who have no one else to talk to because they have such a different perspective than their family members,” McLean said. “I draw from all the traditions for quotes and inspirations, and I think that appeals to a lot of people.” The format calls for some sharing before McLean and/or her staff lead a 15-20-minute meditation, followed by more casual conversation, she said. “People can just stay as long as they want and about half of them always do. It’s a sweet kind of service. I don’t even know how it happened.” The topics are rarely planned in advance, McLean said, as she depends on “my own humanity” and experience. “Sometimes I talk about stages of grief,

SPIRITUALITY Page 384

We’re Planning a

Secure Water Future

McLean Meditation

When the coronavirus crisis first arrived in America, Sarah McLean figured she’d hunker down with her husband in the couple’s recently-purchased Santa Barbara home to wait out the shelter-in-place situation. The quarter-century veteran contemporary meditation and mindfulness teacher who co-founded the Montecito Meditation Center last year considers herself something of an introvert, and laying low looked like a good idea – and that was before she contracted what she believes was one of the unconfirmed local cases of COVID-19 on an earlier trip to celebrate Chinese New Year’s in Las Vegas. But then one of her longtime students of her meditation teacher training program implored her to lead online meditation sessions for people who were having trouble coping with the crisis, and, after McLean recovered, she decided to give it a go. “Meditation is the perfect antidote to fear, panic, and overall dysregulation,” she explained. “It’s important in times like this to appreciate the life you have, to stay home and be grateful for the home you created, the people you can count on, the beauty around you and what you do have in your own life.” What the virus and global pandemic has done, said McLean, is make our awareness of our own mortality much more acute. “The truth is nobody knows how long you have on the planet, but the coronavirus has made that be more alive in our consciousness and created a lot of fear. I started the (Zoom) calls to help people soothe their nervous systems, help them deal with anxiety and fear by being in the present moment.” McLean began leading four different half-hour sessions over Zoom every day for several weeks, cutting back to twice daily offerings in the middle of April, but she continues to conduct the online sessions completely for free for anyone who wants them every day, including weekends. “It’s gone on longer than I thought it would, but people still want my help,” she explained, noting that more than 50 Zoom accounts are tuned into her plat23 – 30 April 2020

THE CHALLENGES • Our current water sources are vulnerable to factors such as drought and climate change.

NEXT STEPS FOR THE RATE PLAN: MID-MAY

• Our existing water infrastructure is aging— many elements are nearly 100-years-old— and requires ongoing maintenance and modernization to prevent breaks and service interruptions.

Proposition 218 Notice mailing to all parcel owners and customers detailing potential rate changes

• Securing local, reliable supplies with predictable costs to meet the community’s future needs.

Public open house (in person or virtual/by phone as conditions allow)

THE OPPORTUNITIES

JUNE 25, 2020

• Add a long-term Water Supply Agreement with the City of Santa Barbara. • Invest more than $11.7 million in infrastructure upgrades. • Adopt a long-term financial plan and water rate structure.

JUNE

District Board Hearing to consider rate changes

JULY 1, 2020 New rates go into effect (if approved by District Board)

Public participation is available for all Board meetings via Teleconferencing. www.montecitowater.com | customerservice@montecitowater.com | 805-969-2271

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

SPIRITUALITY (Continued from page 37)

CITY OF SANTA BARBARA - GENERAL SERVICES DIVISION PO BOX 1990, SANTA BARBARA, CA 93102-1990 INVITATION FOR BIDS NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that sealed bids will be received via electronic transmission on the City of Santa Barbara PlanetBids portal site until the date and time indicated below at which time they will be publicly opened and posted for: BID NO. 5825 DUE DATE & TIME: May 6, 2020 UNTIL 3:00 P.M. AIRPORT LONG TERM PARKING LOT CRACK FILL AND SLURRY Scope of Work: Crack fill, slurry, and re-striping of the Santa Barbara Airport Long Term Parking Lot. Bidders must be registered on the city of Santa Barbara’s PlanetBids portal in order to receive addendum notifications and to submit a bid. Go to PlanetBids for bid results and awards. It is the responsibility of the bidder to submit their bid with sufficient time to be received by PlanetBids prior to the bid opening date and time. The receiving deadline is absolute. Allow time for technical difficulties, uploading, and unexpected delays. Late or incomplete Bid will not be accepted. If further information is needed, contact Jennifer Disney Dixon, Buyer II at (805) 564-5356 or email: JDisney@SantaBarbaraCA.gov. A Pre-Bid meeting will not be held. FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICE ACT Contractor agrees in accordance with Section 1735 and 1777.6 of California Labor Code, and the California Fair Employment Practice Act (Sections 1410-1433) that in the hiring of common or skilled labor for the performance of any work under this contract or any subcontract hereunder, no contractor, material supplier or vendor shall, by reason of age (over 40), ancestry, color, mental or physical disability, sex, gender identity and expression, marital status, medical condition (cancer or genetic characteristics), national origin, race, religious belief, or sexual orientation, discriminate against any person who is qualified and available to perform the work to which such employment relates. The Contractor further agrees to be in compliance with the City of Santa Barbara’s Nondiscriminatory Employment Provisions as set forth in Chapter 9 of the Santa Barbara Municipal Code. BONDING Bidder shall furnish a Bid Guaranty Bond in the form of a money order, a cashier’s certified check, or bond payable to the order of the City, amounting to ten percent (10%) of the bid. Bonds must be signed by the bidder and a corporate surety, who is authorized to issue bonds in the State of California. Note: All bids must be accompanied by a copy of the bid security uploaded to PlanetBids. Only the original bid security of the three (3) lowest bidders must be mailed or delivered to the Purchasing Office in a sealed envelope and be received within (3) City business days of the bid due date and time for the bid to be considered.

or how to handle anger, and the responsibility of emotions. I really just feel what’s supposed to happen that day. I’ve been doing it for a long time, so I just trust what comes up.” The morning event last Sunday, for example, included a body scan for relaxing the nervous system, plus breath awareness and a loving kindness meditation. “I’ve done everything from the Wheel of Awareness from Dan Siegel to mantra practices to breathwork to contemplative poetry,” McLean said. “Nobody has to know what they’re getting into. You can be brand new – I’ll teach it on the spot.” (Sarah McLean’s “Sowing the Seeds of Peace” online meditations take place at 9 am and 4 pm daily on the Zoom platform at https://zoom.us/j/9282040067 [password: peace]. For more information, visit www. facebook.com/events/153241605936080.)

Soup is Soaring, with Workshops, Too

Yoga Soup, the studio located down by the Santa Barbara train station that often serves as a bookstore, gift shop, and gathering place during our “old normal”

Bidders are hereby notified that a Payment Bond in the amount of 100% of the bid total will be required from the successful bidder for bids exceeding $25,000. The bond must be provided with ten (10) calendar days from notice of award and prior to the performance of any work. The bond must be signed by the bidder and a corporate surety, who is authorized to issue bonds in the State of California. Bidders are hereby notified that a separate Performance Bond in the amount of 100% of the bid total will be required from the successful bidder for bids exceeding $25,000. The bond must be provided with ten (10) calendar days from notice of award and prior to the performance of any work. The bond must be signed by the bidder and a corporate surety, who is authorized to issue bonds in the State of California.

ORDINANCE NO. 5942 AN INTERIM URGENCY ORDINANCE OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SANTA BARBARA EXTENDING ORDINANCE NO. 5938 AMENDING SANTA BARBARA MUNICIPAL CODE

PREVAILING WAGE, APPRENTICES, PENALTIES, & CERTIFIED PAYROLL In accordance with the provisions of Labor Code § 1773.2, the Contractor is responsible for determining the correct prevailing wage rates. However, the City will provide wage information for projects subject to Federal Davis Bacon requirements. The Director of Industrial Relations has determined the general prevailing rates of wages and employer payments for health, welfare, vacation, pensions and similar purposes applicable, which is on file in the State of California Office of Industrial Relations. The contractor shall post a copy of these prevailing wage rates at the site of the project. It shall be mandatory upon the contractor to whom the contract is awarded and its subcontractors hired to pay not less than the said prevailing rates of wages to all workers employed by him in the execution of the contract (Labor Code § 1770 et seq.). Prevailing wage rates are available at http://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/PWD/index.htm

SECTION 30.295.040 SUBSECTION P FOR AN ADDITIONAL

It is the duty of the contractor and subcontractors to employ registered apprentices and to comply with all aspects of Labor Code § 1777.5.

The publication of this ordinance is made pursuant to the

There are penalties required for contractor’s/subcontractor’s failure to pay prevailing wages and for failure to employ apprentices, including forfeitures and debarment under Labor Code §§ 1775, 1776, 1777.1, 1777.7 and 1813. Under Labor Code § 1776, contractors and subcontractors are required to keep accurate payroll records. The prime contractor is responsible for submittal of their payrolls and those of their subcontractors as one package. Payroll records shall be certified and made available for inspection at all reasonable hours at the principal office of the contractor/subcontractor pursuant to Labor Code § 1776. The contractor and all subcontractors under the direct contractor shall furnish certified payroll records directly to the Labor Compliance Unit and to the department named in the Purchase Order/Contract at least monthly, and within ten (10) days of any request from any request from the City or the Labor Commissioner in accordance with Section 16461 of the California Code of Regulations. Payroll records shall be furnished in a format prescribed by section 16401 of Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations, with use of the current version of DIR's “Public Works Payroll Reporting Form” (A-1-131) and “Statement of Employer Payments” (DLSE Form PW26) constituting presumptive compliance with this requirement, provided the forms are filled out accurately and completely. In lieu of paper forms, the Compliance Monitoring Unit may provide for and require the electronic submission of certified payroll reports. The provisions of Article 2 and 3, Division 2, Chapter 1 of the Labor Code, State of California, are made by this reference a part of this quotation or bid. A contractor or subcontractor shall not be qualified to bid on, be listed in a bid proposal, subject to the requirements of Section 4104 of the Public Contract Code, or engage in the performance of any contract for public work, as defined in this chapter, unless currently registered and qualified to perform public work pursuant to Section 1725.5. It is not a violation of this section for an unregistered contractor to submit a bid that is authorized by Section 7029.1 of the Business and Professions Code or by Section 10164 or 20103.5 of the Public Contract Code, provided the contractor is registered to perform public work pursuant to Section 1725.5 at the time the contract is awarded.

10 MONTHS & 15 DAYS OR UNTIL MARCH 3, 2021 The above captioned ordinance was adopted at a regular meeting of the Santa Barbara City Council held on April 14, 2020.

provisions of Section 512 of the Santa Barbara City Charter as amended, and the original ordinance in its entirety may be obtained at the City Clerk's Office, City Hall, Santa Barbara, California. (Seal) /s/ Sarah Gorman, CMC City Clerk Services Manager ORDINANCE NO. 5942 STATE OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SANTA BARBARA CITY OF SANTA BARBARA

I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing ordinance was introduced and adopted by the Council of the City of Santa Barbara at a meeting held on April 14, 2020, by the

This project is subject to compliance monitoring and enforcement by the Department of Industrial Relations.

following roll call vote:

CERTIFICATIONS In accordance with California Public Contracting Code § 3300, the City requires the Contractor to possess a valid California General “A,” or C-12 Earthwork and Paving, or C-32 Parking and Highway Improvement contractor’s license at time the bids are opened and to continue to hold during the term of the contract all licenses and certifications required to perform the work specified herein.

AYES:

CERTIFICATE OF INSURANCE Contractor must submit to the contracted department within ten (10) calendar days of an order, AND PRIOR TO START OF WORK, certificates of Insurance naming the City of Santa Barbara as Additional Insured in accordance with the attached Insurance Requirements. ________________________ William Hornung, C.P.M. General Services Manager Published 4/22/20, Montecito Journal

) ) ) ss. ) )

Councilmembers Eric Friedman, Alejandra Gutierrez, Oscar Gutierrez, Meagan Harmon, Mike Jordan, Kristen W. Sneddon; Mayor Cathy Murillo

NOES:

None

ABSENT:

None

ABSTENTIONS:

None

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereto set my hand and affixed the official seal of the City of Santa Barbara on April 15, 2020.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT: The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Little Alex’s, 1024 A Coast Village Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108. Doxa Chara Inc., 1024 A Coast Village Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108. This statement was filed with the County Clerk of Santa Barbara County on April 20, 2020. This statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the Office of the County Clerk. I hereby certify that this is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my

office. Joseph E. Holland, County Clerk (SEAL), filed by Brenda Aguilera. FBN No. 2020-0000993. Published April 22, 29, May 6, 13, 2020. FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT: The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CinemaCamera, 3011 Paseo Del Refugio, Santa Barbara, CA 93105. Peter Fremont Mahar, 3011 Paseo Del Refugio, Santa Barbara, CA 93105. Sara Jane Mahar, 3011 Paseo Del Refugio, Santa Barbara, CA 93105. This statement was filed

38 MONTECITO JOURNAL

with the County Clerk of Santa Barbara County on April 1, 2020. This statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the Office of the County Clerk. I hereby certify that this is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office. Joseph E. Holland, County Clerk (SEAL), filed by John Beck. FBN No. 2020-0000901. Published April 22, 29, May 6, 13, 2020. FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT: The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Kirk’s Plumbing, 2718

Verde Vista Dr., Santa Barbara, CA 93105. Kirk Peters, 2718 Verde Vista Dr., Santa Barbara, CA 93105. This statement was filed with the County Clerk of Santa Barbara County on March 5, 2020. This statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the Office of the County Clerk. I hereby certify that this is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office. Joseph E. Holland, County Clerk (SEAL), filed by John Beck. FBN No. 2020-0000723. Published April 1, 8, 15, 22, 2020.

“The character of the nurse is as important as the knowledge she possesses.” – Carolyn Jarvis

/s/ Sarah P. Gorman, CMC City Clerk Services Manager I HEREBY APPROVE the foregoing ordinance on April 15, 2020.

/s/ Cathy Murillo Mayor Published April 22, 2020 Montecito Journal

23 – 30 April 2020

times, has managed to schedule upwards of 70 classes available via the Zoom service each week. A few weeks into the transition, Yoga Soup has also started to migrate some of the workshops that cover everything from yoga techniques to ecstatic dance to meditation to breathwork to the online platform. Chantal Peterson – a regular instructor and workshop leader at the studio who is also a writer, birth doula, certified massage therapist, a RYT Yoga Alliance certified Women’s Self Care practitioner, and a body positivity advocate – leads “An introduction to Connected Breathwork” at The Soup this Sunday, April 26. Breathwork, one of the most effective and accessible healing tools, can be used for everyday clarity and inspiration as well as for unearthing deep emotional wounds. In Sunday’s event, Peterson will introduce the practice of Connected Breathwork, explaining why the technique is effective and how it differs from other breathwork techniques. The intro will be followed by a guided 45-minute breathwork practice in which participants will be guided gracefully into and out of the practice anchored in a curated musical journey. The day finishes with a short meditation to help ground the healing modality, the final step for participants to be able to bring Connected Breathwork into daily life. Admission to the 5 pm workshop over Zoom is $15. “Practicing the Alchemy of Intuitive Writing & Gentle Yoga,” part of Yoga Soup’s Sunday Writing Series, also takes place on April 26, with Deborah Donohue leading the workshop with a theme of “Cultivating Grace, Steadiness and Equanimity in Times of Uncertainty.” The underlying principle for Sunday’s practice is that life has always been fragile and uncertain, although we may not be aware of it. “When something happens that changes the sameness of days, the fact that our time on Earth is vulnerable and fleeting becomes crystal clear,” Donohue writes in the event description. “All at once we may find ourselves untethered and anxious, the past a place we cannot return to, the future an unpromised and unknowable landscape. We have only that which we have always had, the present moment.” Donohue will offer writing prompts, practices, and gentle yoga poses to create a unique alchemy, one that can transform unsettled perceptions and somatic experiences into something more positive. The goal is to skillfully cultivate one’s innate dignity and divinity along with the clarity and grace, insight, strength and serenity needed to navigate whatever may present itself in each unfolding moment. The workshop is appropriate for all levels of experience in writing and yoga. Participants should have a journal or notebook and pen handy when the 90-minute Zoom class, which costs $7, begins at 1:45 pm. Visit www.yogasoup. com for details on all the online activities.

Free Fundamentals of Yoga

Santa Barbara Yoga Center’s free monthly introduction to the practice, principles and purposes of yoga haven’t been postponed due to the pandemic. They’ve migrated over to the Zoom platform, where veteran teacher Kat Connors-Longo will lead the two-hour class designed for beginning students who would like to learn the basics before attending an ongoing class, or for any yoga student who’d like a brush up on the foundational concepts of the practice. Emphasis is given to the understanding of the basic yoga postures, including both their effect and the correct alignment in adopting them. Register online at then Zoom on over to https://zoom.us/j/8059656045 for the 1-3 pm workshop on Sunday, April 26. Visit www.santabarbarayogacenter.com.

Discount at DiviniTree

DiviniTree Yoga, the studio located across the street from city hall in downtown Santa Barbara, doesn’t have any workshops planned over our next week, and also doesn’t offer as many different streaming classes in the time of COVID-19 as its two main competitors. But newbies to the virtual studio can sample all of them for one week for just $25, in the process helping both the teachers and the studio financially survive the stay-at-home orders. Visit www. divinitreesantabarbara.com.

Patagonia’s Price-less Pandemic Yoga Practice

Patagonia, the Ventura-based designer/distributor of outdoor clothing and gear, is helping the local community combat the coronavirus through offering several yoga classes online free of charge. A three-part Yoga & Wellness Series with Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Yoga Instructor and Wellness Coach Julie Peacock, comes to a close on April 28 with a 30-minute vinyasa practice focusing on the hips and lower back followed by a 30-minute conversation around nutrition with simple at-home recipes for breakfast and lunch. Access the 10 am class at https://bit.ly/34oAAmw, password “julieyoga.” Ongoing virtual weekly yoga classes are also being held Sunday at 11:30 am-12:30 pm, 23 – 30 April 2020

consisting of an all levels flow class with a brief seated meditation and core work followed by progressively sequenced standing postures, back bends, twists, hip openers and forward folds with plenty of time for savasana at the end. Zoom room access via https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98002406393, with the password “flow.” Nina Kolar also offers an online all-levels vinyasa flow every Tuesday at 3 pm when you can expect active flexibility work, playful transitions, core work… and some quality dad jokes. Join using the Zoom link at https://bit.ly/2UXpO3y, with password “ninayoga.” Finally, Geneva teaches an all-levels accessible vinyasa class that focuses on alignment using physical anatomy and subtle body cues to integrate body, mind and breath. Access the 5 pm Wednesday class at https://bit.ly/2VG2Qx5, password: “g yoga.” Info on the classes and all things Patagonia at www.facebook.com/pg/PATAGONIA/ events.

Coping with the Crisis with Chloe Conger

Montecito yoga-meditation-QiGong teacher Chloe Conger has added a new online class, Qigong and Meditation, taking place every Saturday at 10 am, with admission by donation. Conger’s class is a moving meditation (like Tai Chi) that connects us to the effortless flow and pulse of energy that runs throughout the body, she explains on her website. The sacred art tonifies the nervous system, cleanses and vitalizes the energy body, and opens and stills the mind to slip naturally into a deep state of peace and stillness. “The ultimate purpose of our time together is not self-improvement, or getting it ‘right’; rather, it is to cultivate an open intimacy with all aspects of ourselves and our experience – to know reality directly without the distorting lenses of preference, story and agenda.” The weekly workshop consists of a 15-20-minute sitting session following a standing practice, and those in financial stress are invited to attend as her guest and pay the love forward. Visit www.chloeconger.com/ qigong-meditation-class-saturdays for more info and to access the Zoom room. Conger says that practice is more vital than ever in this time, noting that “The Great Pause” has been a valuable and rich opportunity to reflect on our patterns, individually and collectively. This is an incredible opportunity to change the unconscious, destructive course we have been on, and ask ourselves: What do we most value? Where are we going? What are the externalities – the costs – of our fevered consumption? How can we remake the economy and our way of life to reflect universal care for all beings and the planet? Conger, who also leads a Qigong, Yoga & Meditation class at 8:30 am Mondays through Yoga Soup’s Zoom portal, recommends reading Charles Eisenstein’s provocative essay, “The Coronation” – accessible online at https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-coronation – to get a deeper perspective of the pandemic’s possibilities as we continue to marinate in the wonder-space COVID-19 has created.

Local Buddhist Communities Continue Offerings

The Santa Barbara Institute for Conscious Studies’ most recent newsletter includes more updates, meditation sessions and other materials from founder Alan Wallace along with another gem: a prayer and practice involving Tārā the Curer of Infectious Disease. H. E. Dagyum Chenmo Kusho Sakya has advised, translated and offered the practice at this time of global pandemic, with an English version translated by Kassapo Ngawang Khyentse. The text begins “Homage to she whose two eyes, the sun and full moon, Shine with a brilliant vivid light; Reciting HARA twice and TUTTĀRE, the most severe epidemics she allays.” Visit www.sbinstitute.com. Over at Bodhi Path Santa Barbara, resident teacher Dawa Tarchin Phillips has begun offering Daily Dharma sessions from 2-2:30 pm Mondays through Fridays. Join Dawa, other practitioners and dharma students for the 30-minute live practice session that include meditating, building connections, sharing reflections, Q&A with Dawa, and nurturing the community’s practice together during COVID-19. Phillips also continues to teach most Thursday evenings from 7-9 pm, while the regular Tuesday sangha-led meditation sessions now have grown to include Wednesdays, also from 6-7 pm. Dawa’s annual Spring Retreat, “Finding Inner Peace, Genuine Happiness and & Lasting Freedom,” also takes place this week, from Monday-Friday, April 27-May 1, with an online format. Participants will have the opportunity to experience inner peace and develop genuine happiness and lasting inner freedom via developing a practice of mindfulness and meditation, reflection, insight, noble silence and contemplation during the five-day meditation retreat. The event – which can be helpful for coping with the emotions caused by coping with COVID-19 – is suitable for both experienced practitioners and newcomers on all levels. Visit https://lastingfreedom2020.eventbrite.com for information and registration. For all other Bodhi Path events, visit www. bpsbonline.com. •MJ

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

Quarantine Break photos by Claudia Schou High-heel enthusiast, boot camp novice and fancy recipe collector. Loves Flannery O’Connor and Breakfast with The Beatles. Formerly at California Apparel News, Orange County Register and LA Times Community News.

his year, Montecito residents welcomed spring quietly at home. Yet the season still offers serene outdoor pleasures plus a touch of social distancing. Here is how some residents are spending their limited time outdoors. Editor’s Note: Our photographer wore a mask when taking these photos.

40 MONTECITO JOURNAL

“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

23 – 30 April 2020

Our Town

The upper border wall designated for the mural project at Carpinteria United Boys & Girls Club

by Joanne A. Calitri

Joanne is a professional international photographer and journalist. Contact her at: artraks@yahoo.com

Lend a Socially Distant Hand Project

ichael Baker, CEO of the United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County, is turning the COVID-19 lockdown into an all-community outreach program with his new project, Lend a Socially Distant Hand. The project is multi-faceted, but its overall mission is to take advantage of this time when the clubs are dark and give these facilities upgrades and enhancements. For anyone not familiar with the Boys & Girls Clubs organization, it provides vital after-school programs and important guidance and character building. Says Baker, “I knew incredibly talented people were home and looking for a way to get out safely and make a difference at this time, so I created these projects at all our clubs in the county that can be done now because the clubs are not filled with the kids we serve 24/7. The projects at our clubs include a roof repair, new counter and re-keying of the locks at the Lompoc facility, a new roof at Camp Whittier, refreshed flooring at Goleta, and upgrading the interior walls of some of the clubs with mural paintings sponsored by the Squire Foundation Santa Barbara. In addition, all five clubs are working with the local Food Bank to distribute approximately 1,700 bags of groceries daily to over 33,756 individuals including a brown bag lunch for school kids seven days a week. As the name implies, everyone involved with Lend a Socially Distant Hand is strictly adhering to the social distance and lockdown protocols, in addition to wearing protective gear. “Together, local Samaritans and businesses have stepped up to the plate with us to be a part of a positive action that serves the kids, our clubs’ infrastructure, and our community at large,” explains Baker. Baker holds an advanced degree with a concentration on social welfare related to the urban family. He and the Squire Foundation’s Director of Public Outreach Jana Brody and Executive Director Ashley W . Hollister took time for a quick Zoom Interview to detail Distant Hand’s programs and how you can get involved: Q: Michael, what other projects for your Boys & Girls Clubs locations need to get done during the lockdown? A: Plumbing, electrical work, basic carpentry. 23 – 30 April 2020

Goleta United Boys & Girls Club food distribution volunteers

Michael Baker before entering the Goleta United Boys & Girls Club to set up the food distribution for the day

Karen Welty Graf on the job doing food distribution at the Carpinteria United Boys & Girls Club

And how can people contact you with ideas or for work? They can call or text my cell at 805.710.5040. Do you need funding for supplies? The Food Bank is supplying the groceries and for the other projects we can always use support for supplies and work being done. The interior mural supplies will cost us roughly $2,000 per site or $8,000 total for our four local clubs (in Carpinteria, Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Lompoc). Our other sites are on school property so we cannot paint murals there, so any financial help is appreciated. Ashley and Jana detail the mural project: The murals’ basic design is called Tape Art, which developed out of the urban art movement of the 1960s, increasing the amount of public mural work and developed originally as an alternative for spray paint. It

seems fitting that we are integrating this creative art form into the Boys & Girls Club aesthetic footprint, since it developed at a time of intense social change and grew out of a desire to communicate humane social values to communities. The color field design was chosen so we could beautify the walls without a long drawn out design vetting process. The goal is vibrant color and energy that can go in any space. The walls are all different sizes and the design will be proportional per each. There are options for some additional artwork design; for example, we’re looking at doing sports silhouettes in the Carpinteria gym if approved. The abstract designs for the murals will be created by the Squire creative team and approved by the Boys & Girls Clubs for site-specific placement at each of their countywide facilities. The murals’ design and painting will be conducted over a number of weeks and months by individuals adhering to social distancing orders. Individuals will work alone, in shifts, coordinated by Jana and Boys & Girls Club on-site staff. Will the artists be paid? Squire will provide stipends for volunteer artists to complete portions of the murals at a rate of $50 per hour; details for applying are on our website: www.thesquirefoundation.org/ mural-project-boys-and-girls-club. What will doing interior murals provide for both the kids and community? Michael: The Arts play such a critical role in our daily core programs at

• The Voice of the Village •

every club on every single program day. Every day over 1,200 youths visit our sites when they are open. Having these incredibly talented artists come and lend their socially distant hand to bring some beautiful artwork to our clubs will be a nice surprise to our members when they are finally able to come back to enjoy our facilities again. In closing, Ashley shared, “Throughout the world, mural art has become a way for communities to express the core ideas that make up their collective identities, expressing who and what they value most. During this difficult time of global pandemic, Squire is incredibly heartened and excited to be presented with the opportunity to partner with the United Boys & Girls Club of Santa Barbara County to bring a fresh creative face to these vital community resources. Squire’s hope is that these murals will bring a colorful new dynamic to the Boys & Girls Clubs in our community, and express our desire to fill the lives of our youth with color, creativity, inspiration, and resilience. We look forward to completing the murals and unveiling them to the community when the order is finally lifted.” Special thanks from United Boys & Girls Clubs of SB County to Titan Roofing & Rain Gutters Inc., Leonard Grabowski, and Joe the Locksmith. 411: Call Michael Baker directly at 805.710.5040 and www.unitedbg.org The Squire Foundation Mural Project: www.thesquirefoundation. org/mural-project-boys-and-girlsclub •MJ MONTECITO JOURNAL

EARTH DAY (Continued from page 12)

ing, recycling, and reusing two-thirds (66%) of the waste that we used to burn or bury in landfills! What we did in Santa Barbara became the template for changing recycling laws throughout the country. All of that environmental enthusiasm had a remarkable impact on the people of Santa Barbara, sparking an outpouring of good work. In my own life, it got me elected to the City Council, then Mayor, and also President of the California League of Cities, Vice President of the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C., and President of the Institute for Local Government in Sacramento. For someone who knew little about politics, it was a total surprise that my life took such a turn. Even though I would like to say that enlightened political leadership led us to a brighter tomorrow, the real story is that it was an army of somewhat novel, eccentric, and creative citizens who led the way and changed the planet’s future. As remarkable a place as Santa Barbara is, you could list double-spaced on a 3x5 card the number of local elected officials that changed Santa Barbara’s stewardship agenda. So, who did change our local environment since the first Earth Day? Here is my short list of Ten Environmental Legacies that shaped our world since 1970 – and, the Pioneers that made it happen: 1. Establishment of the California Coastal Commission Voted into existence by a statewide vote in 1972, the law preserved the coastline for enjoyment of future generations. Intensive beachfront development came to a halt, and the citizens were put in charge of the stewardship of the coast. No one helped shape this effort more that the longtime Chair of the Commission, Santa Barbara County First District Supervisor, Naomi Schwartz. Her fearless leadership assured a pattern of conservation that has lasted through five decades. 2. Instituted Recycling as a Fact of Life in the U.S. Bob Klausner and his wife, Betty, had relocated to Montecito just after the oil spill, but he put his business mentorship to work, and joined me at CEC to move recycling from a volunteer Boy Scout exercise, to a thriving business. I learned more from Bob in five years than most people do in a lifetime! He was the consummate volunteer. He began in 1974 by convincing the President of the Garden State Paper

Santa Barbara Recycling Center at Garden and Ortega Streets

Bob Klausner, 1982

Recycling Center dedication, September 1978

Co. in New Jersey to give CEC an exclusive contract for recycled paper that weathered any downturn in the economy. In 1975 we started 40 neighborhood pickup routes with college students, and offered cash back to over 400 nonprofit organizations if they would deliver paper to the Recycling Center which we convinced the City to let us build at Garden and Ortega Streets. By 1976, we held the first National Recycling Congress at the Miramar Hotel in Montecito, and convinced the State Legislature in 1978 to put together millions of dollars of grants to help building recycling facilities throughout California. Nothing, though, topped what Bob did with the military. In 1977 Bob and I drove up to visit the Base Commander at Vandenberg AFB to talk him into joining our countywide effort. What the Commander told us would have stopped me in our tracks, but Bob was undeterred. The Commander told us that the Defense Disposal Act of Congress prohibited his giving us an exclusive contract and that every load of recyclables would have to be put out to bid. So, Bob went to the Defense Disposal Agency in Michigan, then the Corp. of Engineers in New Orleans, and finally we stood in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, and Bob convinced him that this was in the interest of our national defense! Low, and behold, CEC was given on the spot the ONLY exemption to this Act of Congress! Two weeks later a van load of military brass descended on the Santa Barbara Recycling Center trying to figure out who we were! Within a month we had a new Center next to the Vandenberg AFB runway and we were in business! Within five years, our model program became a national model for the military and was enacted into law and required at every base in the country. 3. Fought to make Land Conservancy a Priority The land development rush of the 1960s gave way to the preservation of open space. Six months after the first Earth Day when the 3,638-acre El Capitan Ranch on the Gaviota Coast was proposed for a development of 1,500 homes, the citizenry rose up in a protest that could be heard all the way to Sacramento. Selma Rubin, who over the years became the matriarch to many citizen organizations in Santa Barbara, took on the developers in a Selma Rubin landmark legal case that brought the development to a complete collapse. For the next 30 years the battle over land conservation raged on, and Selma was a front row leader in every battle. Today, thanks to the efforts of Chuck Blitz and Roger Himovitz, the new owners of El Capitan Ranch, over 3,000 acres are set aside in perpetuity as a preserve. Parallel to this battle, Sue and Jim Higman led an army of volunteers to ultimately saved the 92-acre Wilcox Property (now the Douglas Family Preserve) after 10 years of battle. Also preserved were the 150-acre Jesuit Property (now part of Elings Park), and at least six other major land holdings representing thousands of acres were saved as open space for generations to come. 4. Citizens Used the Law to Fight for the Environment It wasn’t long after the oil spill that Bud Bottoms and a host of activists formed Get Oil Out brought together a young army of committed attorneys to fight to free the coastline from the ravages of energy development. Today, they are one of the most respected environmental organizations in the state with a string of landmark decisions under their direction.

42 MONTECITO JOURNAL

5. Made California’s Energy Conservation the Strongest in the Nation By 1976, it was clear that we couldn’t just oppose energy development, we “In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.” – Cicero

23 – 30 April 2020

January 28, 1969, Santa Barbara Oil Spill

needed to reduce our dependency on energy. In January of 1976, the City of Santa Barbara hired the CEC to review and recommend to the city how to reduce its energy use. The City Manager was opposed, claiming that everything that could be done, had been done. Six months later, we presented our findings to the City showing how they could reduce their energy use by 25% – and, gave them a refund check for over $50,000 for overpayments they had made to Southern California Edison. As a result, the Council fired the City Administrator, and I was asked to run for the City Council. Meanwhile, under the leadership of Jerry Brown, the new Governor of California, the state instituted one of the strongest energy use standards for new construction in the United States. Today, 50 years later, the per capita use of energy in California is 50% below the average of the other 49 states. 6. Cleaned California’s Air with Alternative-Fueled cars One of Governor Brown’s stellar appointments was Mary Nichols as the Director of the California Air Resources Board. No other state had an official department dedicated to cleaning up the air of an entire state. Mary’s stunning achievements changed the automobile standards statewide, and reduced air pollution in a way never thought possible at the time of the first Earth Day. By 2020, California has thousands of electric vehicles on the road, car companies such as Toyota have over a million hybrid Prius vehicles selling like hotcakes, and eleven auto companies are producing hydrogen-fueled experimental cars. Back in Santa Barbara, CEC’s Green Car Show held annually on Earth Day is the biggest of its kind in the nation. 7. Set the Standards for Cleaning the Oceans Santa Barbara’s Bob Sulnick, along with actor Ted Danson, formed the American Oceans Campaigns in the 1980s, focusing on global attempts to reduce the pollution of the seas. Another local hero, Hillary Hauser, provided the leadership for the Heal the Ocean organization. Both groups have obtained significant help from the Hollywood community to publicize the destruction of the oceans. 8. Galvanized Community Support to Save the Waterfront In 1924, a number of citizens banded together to try to save the Santa Barbara waterfront from becoming another Miami Beach with wall-to-wall hotels. Led by Pearl Chase, the consummate champion of civic activism, they managed to save East Beach from over development, and the citizens voted to preserve the

Fess Parker at Roundhouse, 1982

23 – 30 April 2020

waterfront and park lands now known as Chase Palm Park. Fifty years later, history repeated itself. Paul Relis and Robert Easton formed the Committee for Santa Barbara to stop Southern Pacific Railroad from making a deal with the Santa Barbara City Council to build a 1,000-room hotel where Chase Palm Park is today, and to reroute Cabrillo Boulevard behind the development. The Committee for S.B. met weekly and drew together dozens of people who fought for five years to stop the project in its many forms that kept emerging. In the end, the actor Fess Parker bought out the railroad’s interest in the land and made a deal with the City to dedicate half of the land as an extension of Chase Palm Park on the northside of the street as extra park land. 9. Established California as the Leader in Renewable Energy John Bryson who lives part time in Carpinteria, became one of Governor Jerry Brown’s youngest appointees chosen to make his environmental mark. In his twenties, Bryson was one of the founders of the National Resources Defense Council. At age 32, Governor Brown appointed him to be the head of the State Water Resources Control Board. Four years later, the Governor appointed him to be the Chair of the Public Utilities Commission. Five years later, Bryson joined Southern California Edison as a V.P., and by the time his career there ended, he was Chairman of the Board of Edison International. More than anyone else in the 1990s, he steered Edison to become the largest proponent of renewable energy in the world, far exceeding the state or national goals and requirements. 10. Established the UCSB Bren School as the Premier Environmental School in the Nation Before teaching about the environmental crisis became fashionable, numerous local luminaries began teaching classes at UCSB based on the lessons learned following the 1969 oil spill. UCSB took a major step forward with the help of a donation from Donald Bren of the Irvine Corporation. Now, the Bren School for Environmental Science and Management led by Dean Steve Gaines, Ph.D. has become one of the premier graduate schools in the world preparing students to become catalytic forces for change, ranging from the protection of nature to the scientific and social changes needed to transform our economy for a sustainable future. So, where do we go next? Climate Change is the biggest challenge facing our global community. Not only is it an environmental crisis, but it is also devastating the local crops and economy of most 3rd world cultures. Without a concerted effort to reverse this trend, within 50 years we will see the extinction of thousands of species of plants and animals. We will also face an economic and social pandemic that will pit rich countries against poor ones, and vast migrations of immigrants will flood the countries that still will have resources. In the March issue of “O” Magazine, Oprah Winfrey, one of Montecito’s most noted spokespeople, says: “The environment is the thing she values most in life.” Like Oprah, most of us marvel that we are so lucky to live in a place where the environment is a God-given gift. So, what are Santa Barbarans doing today that can make a global difference in preserving this remarkable gift? The continued environmental stewardship work by hundreds of people in our community provides gratifying hope. I have been particularly struck by the need to transform our purchasing patterns and power to make sure that our economy is not only sustainable, but that it contributes, rather than depletes, our natural resources. Like the Dust Bowl in the 1930s we need a revolutionary change in the way we farm our economic resources. I am strongly supportive of the partnership between UCSB’s Bren School, the “green certifiers” of products in the U.S., the Environmental Media Association in Hollywood, and the Sacramento-based Institute for Local Government to develop a significant database of sustainable products that we can all buy as a substitute for products that deplete our natural resources. The GreenChoice Data (GCD) group, based in Santa Barbara, has reached out to the most credible product certifiers in the country to become partners. The project headed by Gary Petersen, along with their work with the UCSB Bren School, has created a significant step forward in achieving this goal. Thanks goes to the Wells Fargo Foundation who made a significant contribution, and to the high-level support of the State of California. The CDG group is currently seeking funders to expand their work to tie the data base to a credit card that will give every consumer the ability to scan products in a store and determine their sustainability rating, with rewards for purchasing green products. We can make the economy greener millions of purchases at a time. South Korea has tried this path and they now have over 18,000,000 green credit card holders in a country with a population slightly larger than California. We cannot predict the future accurately, but we do know that the location that sparked the first Earth Day is still the hotbed of environmental protection and hope. •MJ

• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

THE RIGHT STUFF (Continued from page 29)

Brittany Detrick

Thomas Rollerson with a package of Kate Farms

Game Changer in a Bottle (or Actually, a Carton)

Kate Farms has continuously evolved the formula to help adults as well as kids. In 2016, after five years of chronic health and digestive problems, former San Luis Obispo resident Brittany Detrick’s doctors diagnosed her with gastroparesis and chronic intestinal pseudo obstruction. “It’s a fancy way of saying I have paralysis in my stomach and in my intestines,” Detrick says. “So I would eat something and it would stop inside me and eventually ferment and I would regurgitate.” Detrick credits Kate Farms with keeping her healthy. “I was on (the Kate Farms drink) but it wasn’t covered by insurance, so my dietician got free sample after sample from Kate Farms for me. Now, I’m having a full and good life.” Santa Barbara resident and philanthropist Thomas Rollerson says he’s relied on Kate Farms to care for his aging parents. Five years ago, doctors diagnosed Thom’s stepmother with Bulbar ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which works like Lou Gehrig’s disease, except in reverse. “It starts in the throat instead of your feet,” Rollerson explains. “My stepmom lost her ability to use her tongue and to swallow, which is rather essential for eating and nutrition.” At the time of her diagnosis, she had a life expectancy of just two years. But because she still had her mental faculties, she insisted on mixing her own fruit smoothies, even studying clinical pharmaceutical trials for ALS to glean information. It was during her research that Rollerson’s stepmom discovered Kate Farms. “It was the first and only product she embraced,” he recalls, “because everything in the product was what she had been putting in her shakes. It was pretty extraordinary for her to find.” Dr. Richard Belkin, a pulmonologist at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, says he has personally witnessed the benefits that Kate Farms has brought to his patients. Belkin believes that Kate Farms is the ideal meal-replacement health shake on the market. “A lot of it has to do with what the patients are willing to take and what leads to great results,” he elaborates. “I’ve had a great experience with Kate Farms, because it’s a great way for patients with underlying deficiencies to gain weight.” In recent months, Kate Farms has expanded its operations to include distribution to major hospitals around the country, and has enlarged its product portfolio with both adult and pediatric formulations of clinically-proven, plant-based ingredients that help a variety of patients with medical conditions like cancer and neurological, autoimmune, and gastrointestinal illnesses. In March, the American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN) released new clinical data on Kate Farms demonstrating improved tolerance and weight gain for children with a study from the largest independent pediatric gastroenterologist practice in Atlanta, Georgia, GI Care for Kids. Also, a case study from Valley Children’s Hospital demonstrated the benefits provided by Kate Farms to patients with Crohn’s disease. Finally, a case study conducted by Phoenix Children’s Hospital showed how Kate Farms, with its phytonutrient blend, resolved symptoms of gastrointestinal intolerance and led to weight gain with a patient who had undergone a bone-marrow transplant. “The totality of research, not just my own, indicates that plant-based formulas are effective in improving tolerance, supporting weight gain and improving patient outcomes in a variety of conditions, both oral and tube feeding,” wrote one of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Stanley A. Cohen, a pediatric gastroenterologist. “And patients report feeling better, which leads to improved adherence as well.” Kate Farms is now the number-one plant-based formula prescribed and recommended in the U.S., according to independent distributor data. Because the company’s formulas help people with major medical conditions whether they drink it orally or get their nutrition through a feeding tube, the products can help people with

44 MONTECITO JOURNAL

The Kate Farms team

less severe conditions as well, customers who may not be eligible for insurance coverage. Kate Farms serves those patients via katefarms.com and locally at Tri-County Produce on Milpas Street. The company also has a history of providing their shelf-stable shakes to people in need during times of disaster. Kate Farms donated to Hurricane Harvey victims and, during the 1/9/2018 debris flow aftermath, to the local chapter of the American Red Cross Foundation. During this unprecedented time of COVID-19, Kate Farms has made a commitment to donate $1 million worth of product to those at risk and in need of good nutrition. And Kate Farms has teamed up with Meals on Wheels in California to provide free deliveries to the program’s clients from Southern California to the Bay Area. “Kate Farms is a terrific organization,” says Bill Cruikshank, executive director of Meals on Wheels of Long Beach. Recently, Cruikshank supervised a delivery of Kate Farms shakes to the Century Villages at Cabrillo in Long Beach, which provides housing, social, and medical services to 2,000 people, many of them veterans who were previously homeless. “A lot of those vets are homebound and suffering from disabilities that prevent them from shopping for or preparing food,” Cruikshank says. “We did a route delivery a week ago, delivering meals and two bottles of Kate Farms meal replacement drinks to everyone. We had a wonderful reaction from the clients.” The company has recently donated 20,000 cases of product to those at risk in Brooklyn and has plans to distribute Kate Farms pro bono here in Santa Barbara. It also has identified neighborhood clinics that are providing crucial work in the community and has donated shakes to front-line healthcare workers to help keep their bodies strong and nourished during this critical time. “Kate Farms is excited to be leading the movement for companies to bring a higher standard of nutrition into healthcare,” says Brett Matthews. “If better nutrition is in healthcare, it means fewer people will get sick and more people will get better. And if you are healthy and feeling good, you can live your best life. Everyone wins.” It is important to note that large numbers of Kate Farms devotees not only improve their conditions, but many actually thrive. Sixteen year-old Hannah Jordan is one such example. Diagnosed with a metabolic disease, when she was four her body was the size of a one-year-old’s. Despite getting her nutrition from a feeding tube, at age 13 Hannah decided she wanted to be a competitive bike racer. Then at age 15 she needed better nutrition for her feeding tube because she was pushing herself so hard as a bike racer and found Kate Farms. Today Hannah is a top hill race climber in the nation who competed this past fall in the World Hill Climb Championships up Gibraltar Road here in Santa Barbara. She won. Says Hannah, “Kate Farms has truly changed my life. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without it. This company is changing lives every day through their formulas, but most importantly through their compassion. I’ve gone from barely surviving to thriving, and could not be more grateful.” It’s a good thing Brett Matthews had such an unsuccessful retirement. •MJ

“As a caregiver, you see selfless acts everyday.” ― – Dr. Raj Panjabi

23 – 30 April 2020

VILLAGE BEAT (Continued from page 23)

dents who had been in contact with the individual were also tested; only one came back positive, an assisted living resident who had been on hospice care, who subsequently passed away. It was announced earlier this week that the death was not due to COVID-19, despite the positive test, and that no other residents had tested positive for the virus as of this press time. At Casa Dorinda, Mrs. von Wittenburg says what she misses most is being out in the community, as she is active with the Montecito Association, the Braille Institute, and the Santa Barbara Zoo. She also misses her manicures and pedicures, and her normally abundant social calendar. “It’s a great place to live, and we look forward to when things will be back to normal,” she said.

Casa Dorinda residents take a scenic drive while utilizing social distancing measures. No cases of the coronavirus have been reported on the campus.

remain in good health. All staff are required to have their temperature taken before each shift, as well as answer simple questions about their health. “So far we haven’t had any cases of COVID-19 here. If we do, we will alert the residents immediately,” McCague said. A decision was made to continue to allow construction on the site; Casa Dorinda is currently undergoing its Master Plan update, which includes adding 31 new residential units, memory care facilities and personal care facilities, a new dining facility, new maintenance facilities, and associated landscaping and improvements on the southern portion of the property, near the oak woodland. All crews working on the project, which is relatively far away from the current residences, are required to check in before beginning work. An in-house TV channel at the facility is being utilized, with daily fitness and meditation classes, movies, and travel shows being offered. Last week McCague himself was on the channel, giving residents a virtual tour of the progress of the campus expansion. Casa Dorinda, along with many other local retirement facilities, have had to adapt to the changing times by teaching residents technological skills they may have not needed before. “We’re teaching residents how to use FaceTime, Zoom, and Skype, so they can keep in touch with their families and friends,” McCague said. “We’re doing our very best to help them.” Maravilla, another senior living facility located in Goleta, recently reported a third-party hospice worker who was tending to several Maravilla residents, tested positive for the virus. In response, all resi23 – 30 April 2020

County to Develop Reopening Plan

On Tuesday, April 21, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors received an update from local health officials and executives regarding the status of COVID-19 in our area. In addition to hearing updated case numbers, the Board was given detailed demographic data for the positive COVID-19 cases, which up until this point, had not been released to the public. As of Monday, the county has 416 positive COVID-19 cases, 96 of which are located in the federal prison in Lompoc. Five percent (21) of the positive cases are in the unincorporated areas of the South County, including Montecito, Summerland, and the City of Carpinteria. The County has reported four deaths from the outbreak, the latest being an over 60-year-old prisoner in Lompoc. “Even though the cases are growing incrementally, it is on a downward trend,” said Public Health Director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso, who said the County has seen a lower number of cases than predicted in earlier models. She credits the stay-at-home order, as well as community efforts to adhere to physical distancing as pertinent reasons for the lower number of cases. The newly-released demographic data shows that the disease has had the greatest effect on the Hispanic and Latino community, showing 61% of cases are within that demographic. 31% of the cases are in the Caucasian population; 2% are African American; 1% are Asian; .5% are American Indian; .5% are Native American or Pacific Islander; 2% are multiracial, and 2% of survey participants refused to answer. Dr. Do-Reynoso also released data related to insurance coverage of affected individuals, their primary language,

their income and education levels, where they learned about the virus, and their knowledge of handwashing and social distancing before their sickness began. That data can be found online at www.publichealthsbc.org/. The data shows that the Hispanic and Latino segment of infected individuals represents a disproportionately higher number of cases compared to their representation in Santa Barbara population. Dr. Do-Reynoso said efforts will continue in order to reach community members whose primary language is Spanish. Discussion ensued among the Board and health officials regarding reopening the community, which Dr. Do-Reynoso could happen after a consistent decline in new cases of the virus. Actions that must be aligned to achieve reopening include ensuring the ability to care for the sick in hospitals, preventing infection in those with a high risk of disease, building the capacity to protect the health and well-being of the public, and reducing social, emotional, and economic disruptions. “When we see the cases and the hospitalizations consistently decrease over a fourteen-day period, that is the benchmark other jurisdictions have used in order to consider elective procedures and to clarify recreational activities that can take place,” Dr. Do-Reynoso said of neighboring counties in Ventura and San Luis Obispo. “That will be our benchmark as well: when we can see a consistent decrease in the number of cases and hospitalization in a period of fourteen days.” Dr. Do-Reynoso went on to say the reopening would be in alignment with the Governor Newsom’s roadmap of reopening, which includes the ability to monitor and protect the community through testing, contact tracing, isolating, and supporting those who are positive or exposed; the ability to prevent infection in people who are at risk for more severe cases; the ability of the hospital and health system to handle surges; the ability to develop therapeutics to meet demand; the ability for businesses, schools, and childcare facilities to support social distancing; and the ability to determine when to reinstitute certain measures, such as the stay-at-home orders, if necessary. County Assistant CEO Nancy Anderson went on to explain that her staff, along with a stakeholder group and consultants, will be developing a strategic, phased reopening plan that complies with national and state guidance over the next four to six weeks. The group will include business leaders, school representatives, and medical professionals, who will outline the best approach for reopening the community. The plan will be

• The Voice of the Village •

reviewed and approved by both the public health director and the Board of Supervisors. “This is a significant project that will involve many in our community,” she said. Several members of the Board of Supervisors voiced concern over the estimate of four to six weeks in which to develop a plan. “We are in the process of self-inducing a depression,” said Fourth District Supervisor Peter Adam. “I would recommend at least interpreting the Governor’s orders as liberally as possible, and opening our economy as soon as possible, fully,” he said. Montecito resident Cori Hayman, calling in during the public comment period, said the following: “We cannot wait for a stakeholder advisory group and delay our transition into the next phase of the pandemic by four to six weeks. The delay is not supported by the data: hospitalizations are down, and fatalities are very low. Our neighboring counties have already recognized that it is time to transition to less disruptive public health and social distancing measures based on similar data. We need not trail them by several weeks; we do not have the luxury of waiting four to six weeks to begin gradually reopening our economy,” she said. “As the UCSB Economic Forecast made abundantly clear last week, our County is in economic collapse, and we know that people are not getting the healthcare they need for non-COVID-19 conditions. Every day that passes under the stay-athome order now makes matters worse for our County and not better. We need the Board to move much more quickly and reopen our economy,” Hayman said. To stay up-to-date on Covid-19 numbers and plans for reopening, visit www.publichealthsbc.org/. •MJ

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DONATIONS NEEDED

PHYSICAL TRAINING Fit for Life REMOTE TRAINING AVAILABLE Customized workouts and nutritional guidance for any lifestyle. Individual/ group sessions. Specialized in corrective exercise – injury prevention

ITEMS FOR SALE TRESOR We Buy, Sell and Broker Important Estate Jewelry. Located in the upper village of Montecito. Graduate Gemologists with 30 years of experience. We do free evaluations and private consultation. 1470 East Valley Rd suite V. 805 969-0888

REAL ESTATE WANTED I want to buy a house in any condition! I have no money down. Easy terms. JBG P.O. Box 3963 Santa Barbara; Calif. 93130

and post surgery. House calls available. Victoria Frost CPT & CES 805-895-9227

TO PLACE A CLASSIFIED AD

Santa Barbara Bird Sanctuary Menagerie 2340 Lillie Avenue Summerland CA 93067 (805) 969-1944 Donate to the Parrot Pantry! At SB Bird Sanctuary, backyard farmer’s bounty is our birds best bowl of food! The flock goes bananas for your apples, oranges & other homegrown fruits & veggies. Volunteers Do you have a special talent or skill? Do you need community service hours? The flock at SB Bird Sanctuary could always use some extra love and socialization. Call us and let’s talk about how you can help. (805) 969-1944

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

It’s Simple. Charge is $2 per line, each line with 31 characters. Minimum is $8 per week/issue. Photo/logo/visual is an additional $20 per issue. Email text to frontdesk@montecitojournal.net or call (805) 565-1860 and we will respond with a cost. Deadline for inclusion is Monday before 2 pm. We accept Visa/MasterCard/Amex

46 MONTECITO JOURNAL

“Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.” – Aristotle

K-9 PALS need volunteers to be foster parents for our dogs while they are waiting for their forever homes. For more information info@k-9pals.org or 805-570-0415. 23 – 30 April 2020

ADVERTISE IN THE LOCAL BUSINESS DIRECTORY (805) 565-1860 805-855-0292

805-855-0292

BUSINESS CARDS FOR VOL 20#48, Dec 10, ’14

"FINANCIAL PLANNINGAS ASITITWAS WASMEANT MEANTTOTOBE" BE" "FINANCIAL PLANNING

William Hydrex WilliamT.T.Toner, Toner,Jr. CFP® AIF® Jr. CFP® AIF® Merrick Construction Complimentary Consultation Complimentary Consultation Bill Vaughan Shine Blow Dry www.plainscoastal.com/faq Musgrove(revised) www.plainscoastal.com/faq bill@plainscoastal.com Valori Fussell(revised) bill@plainscoastal.com Lynch Construction 1482 East Valley Road, STE 10, Montecito, CA Good Doggies Pemberly 1482 East Valley Road, STE 10, Montecito, CA Beautiful eyelash (change to Forever Beautiful Spa) Luis Esperanza Simon Hamilton STEVEN BROOKS JEWELERS

805.335.7009 alex@botanicalandscape.net CL#1050257

Appraisals

for Estates and Insurance Graduate Gemologist ~ Established 1974 Sales of Custom Designed and Estate Jewelry Purchasing Estates sbjewelers@gmail.com or 805-455-1070

Take-Out Meals From Moll Take-Out Mollie Take-Out Meals FromMeals Mollie’sFrom On State!

Alltasty Mollie’s tastysoups, soups, fromMine Min All ofofMollie’s from All of Mollie’s soups, fromtasty Minestrone to Lentil different oneto tochoose choose from) areav (8(8 different (8 different one to chooseone from) are available atfrom) $7 per are serving. Mollie’s Freshand Ravioli, spaghe serving. Fresh Ravioli, spaghet serving. Mollie’s FreshMollie’s Ravioli, spaghetti, other Pasta dishes, OssoBuco, Buco, Calamari, Meatballs, dishes, Calamari, Meatballs, dishes, Osso Buco,Osso Calamari, Meatballs, Chicken and more are C alsoavailable specialreduced reduced Eat-atalso atatspecial also available atavailable special reduced Eat-at-Home prices, allEat-at-H made andin prepared ina aclean clean andsanitary sanitary en and prepared a clean and in sanitary environment by Mollie env and prepared and andher her staff wearing glovesa and her staffand wearing gloves and masks. gloves staff wearing Freshbread breadand andcookies cookies Fresh bread andFresh cookies too!

Order take-out from Mollie’s atfrom 1218 State Street, at orat home delivery Order take-out from Mollie’s 1218 StateSt Order take-out Mollie’s 1218 State (for orders over $50 in Santaover Barbara andin Montecito) (for orders over$50 $50 inSanta SantaBarbara Barbara (for orders by calling 805-770-8300. calling805-770-8300 805-770-83 bybycalling

Ciao! Stay safe and healthy! Ciao! Staysafe safeand andhealt hea Ciao! Stay

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• The Voice of the Village •

MONTECITO JOURNAL

©2020 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Info is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. Sellers will entertain and respond to all offers within this range. Buyer is advised to independently verify the accuracy of that information.

BHHSCALIFORNIA.COM

2697 SYCAMORE CANYON RD, MONTECITO 5BD/7½BA 3±acs • $12,900,000 Nancy Kogevinas, 805.450.6233 LIC# 01209514

770 LADERA LN, MONTECITO 3BD/2½BA • $7,500,000 Cristal Clarke, 805.886.9378 LIC# 00968247

2049 BOUNDARY DR, MONTECITO 4BD/4½BA • $5,950,000 Cristal Clarke, 805.886.9378 LIC# 00968247

700 RIVEN ROCK RD, MONTECITO 2.49 ± acs • $3,975,000 Jody Neal, 805.252.9267 LIC# 01995725

685 STONEHOUSE LN, MONTECITO 2 ± acs • $3,495,000 Team Scarborough, 805.331.1465 LIC# 01182792 / 01050902

1401 E PEPPER LN, MONTECITO LOWER 3BD/2BA • $3,375,000 Daniel Encell, 805.565.4896 LIC# 00976141

2231 CAMINO DEL ROSARIO, MONTECITO

575 BARKER PASS RD, MONTECITO 4BD/4BA+ADU • $2,995,000 MK Group, 805.565.4014 LIC# 01426886

1385 OAK CREEK CANYON RD, MONTECITO

3BD/2BA • $2,995,000 Cristal Clarke, 805.886.9378 LIC# 00968247

792 HOT SPRINGS RD, MONTECITO 6BD/5BA • $2,995,000 Team Scarborough, 805.331.1465 LIC# 01182792 / 01050902

1284 COAST VILLAGE RD, MONTECITO 2BD/2½BA • $2,850,000 Daniel Encell, 805.565.4896 LIC# 00976141

760 HOT SPRINGS RD, MONTECITO 4BD/3BA • $2,275,000 Daniel Encell, 805.565.4896 LIC# 00976141

1348 PLAZA PACIFICA, MONTECITO 3BD/2½BA • $2,250,000 Kathleen Winter, 805.451.4663 LIC# 01022891

6± acs • $2,995,000 MK Group / Joe Stubbins, 805.565.4014 LIC# 01426886 / 01002182

@BHHSCALIFORNIA

1375 PLAZA DE SONADORES, MONTECITO

2BD/2½BA • $2,150,000 Nancy Kogevinas, 805.450.6233 LIC# 01209514