Celebrating History

Gaviota Overlook: A Valentine’s Gift to Santa Barbara

of my first picnic at that yet-to-be-built table. Forget the gorp, this view deserves an elegant spread!

The newly acquired property has three drainages, the main one being a creek beloved by black Angus cattle. Each draw leads to sandstone escarpments and offers sanctuary to a host of plants and animals. We see a curious kestrel that rides the air above us, and we flush a large flock of kingbirds, who fly ahead and settle into the tall grasses until our continued approach causes them to rise again. The males have brilliant yellow breasts and make quite the fashion statement.

Once a piece of the aptly named Nuestra Señora del Refugio land grant, Arroyo Hondo Preserve offers refuge to wildlife and humans alike. During the pandemic, the Preserve stayed open and offered the public a respite from “cabin fever” and the stress of continuing frightful news and restrictions. The additional acres will meet the increasing needs of the community for the benefits of connecting with nature. John Muir, who extolled the ability of nature to refresh one’s inner being, once said, “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than one seeks.”

by Hattie Beresford

The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County has given us an amazing Valentine’s Day gift. A thousand red roses could not compete with the nearly 50 verdant acres the Trust has just added to its Arroyo Hondo Preserve. Since the Preserve’s founding in 2001, more than 1,600 visitors have walked its trails and 26,000 students have been instructed by Preserve docents on school group visits.

Now, the Trust plans to build additional trails and picnic tables along the grassy slopes next door, which proffer amazing views of the coastline, ocean, and Channel Islands.

I was lucky enough to be given a tour of the newly acquired “Gaviota Overlook” by John Warner, Arroyo Hondo Preserve Manager, who had driven the Preserve’s MULE over a newly mowed trail on the hills to meet me. Accompanying us were Katie Szabo, marketing and communications coordinator, and Leslie Chan, Land Programs manager, who had the full lowdown on the newly acquired land. They met me at the gate, and, at first, I had no eyes for anything except a piece of concrete road just inside the borders of the property. It was a strip of the original 16-foot-wide coast highway built between 1913 and 1919. (Pieces of it remain in many spots along the current route of Highway 101, and I have a passion for finding them.) Nevertheless, the luxurious green grasses and rolling hills backed by magnificent sandstone escarpments soon claimed my attention, and John quickly drove us up to the first knoll from where Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel islands were glimpsed on the horizon under an illuminated slate grey sky.

I was duly impressed but John said, “Just wait,” and off we went along the path pocked with the hoofprints of cattle to a higher knoll. “Here,” he said, “will be a picnic table.” It was an even more glorious outlook, and I’m already planning the contents

Since 1794, the lands of the Gaviota Coast have been ranch lands and are a vestige of California’s rural past that needs preservation to continue to function as a refuge and to protect its scenic beauty. The State of California recently recognized this stretch of Highway 101 as a State Scenic Highway for being a magnificent example of one of the few remaining areas of rural coastal California. The alternative to this uplifting scenic beauty can be seen in the consequences of dense housing on both sides of the highway at Shell Beach and elsewhere to the north.

The Trust believes that purchasing the Gaviota Overlook property could kick off a new wave of Gaviota Coast conservation by the Trust and several other groups much of an obstacle for Sadie, either. Although completely composed in the audition room, Sadie says that the casting decision caught her off-guard.

“When my mom told me, I was crying, I was so excited,” says Sadie. “The whole thing is really hard to describe. I was just so happy to be able to audition because whether or not I got the part, I knew that would be an experience to remember. So before I found out, I was really at peace with whatever had happened. I was just so happy I got to audition. But getting the part has really added to my excitement.”

In the following months, Sadie channeled this excitement into getting to know her new character, Mary Lennox. She has read three different versions of The Secret Garden and has attended afternoon tea with co-star, new friend, and bona fide Brit Susan Denaker. All this research has allowed Sadie to get to grips with the production. Even on her days off, Sadie says: “I think I’ll just keep on doing the British accent. It’ll feel natural like that!”

With opening night less two weeks away, Sadie’s dream of becoming a professional stage actress is quickly being realized.

“Since the first time I saw someone on stage, I knew I wanted to be on stage,” Sadie recalls.

With a dancer for a mother, a musician for a father, and a lot of show tunes to listen to in the car, Sadie has grown up surrounded by the performing arts. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Sadie was gestated in the performing arts. Officially, her on-stage debut was in-utero, while her mother Nora was dancing the lead in the John Adams opera Nixon in China.

To be sure, this upbringing has prepared Sadie well to be a thoughtful and confident performer. She aspires to one day portray Elphaba in Wicked and Eliza Hamilton in Hamilton, but today, she is hard at work preparing for a five-week run on the Ahmanson stage.

Tickets for the upcoming production can be found at the Center Theatre Group website (www.centertheatregroup.org).

Sadie is confirmed to perform as Mary Lennox on February 25th at 2 pm, March 5th at 6:30 pm, March 12th at 6:30 pm, March 19th at 6:30 pm, and March 23rd at 2 pm. The Secret Garden with Sadie Brickman Reynolds runs from February 19 to March 26.

From the shores of Scotland, Stella Haffner keeps her connection to her home in Montecito by bringing grads of local schools to the pages of the Montecito Journal like in different spaces. “This will no doubt be edifying for them because they will all of a sudden hear things they hadn’t heard before,” she says.

The pieces by French romantic composers Bizet and Franck both received cool responses at their premieres. “Bizet’s Carmen is now one of the most beloved operas in the canon,” Lin says. “Franck’s ‘Symphony in D minor’ was criticized by Ravel as ‘colorless with heavy instrumentation often spoiling the beauty of its ideas.’ Yet, its sincerity, humanism, and Franck’s particular use of harmonic modulations as musical colors has withstood the test of time and is now appreciated as a work that spoke its own truth.”

Lin says she looks forward to sharing the talents of these students with the wider community. “These students are blessed with the gift of music, and sharing this gift with the community is a wonderful way to honor the gifts that God has given them,” she says.

Also this month, the Westmont Orchestra performs beloved hymns at a fundraising concert Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 7 pm in the sanctuary of Santa Barbara Community Church, 1002 Cieneguitas Road. Admission to the concert is free, but donations are warmly welcomed and always appreciated.

Free Film Screening Guatemala: On the Edge of Discovery

Come and explore the beating heart of the Maya World. This sensitive work creates an authentic sense of place that helps lead to greater understanding of this beautiful land and resilient people who are so often in the news. The film has been accepted for future broadcast on PBS.

Join local filmmaker Brent Winebrenner and Guatemalan Field Producer Jose Antonio Gonzalez for a lively Q&A session after the screening.

Thursday February 23rd - 6:00 to 8:00 pm guatemaladocumentary.com

The Westmont music department hosts its annual Guild Competition on Saturday, Feb. 25, at 7 pm in Deane Chapel. The event, which includes a concert, features talented prospective students who compete for substantial music scholarships. The concert is free and open to the public. The Vocal Guild Competition is Saturday, March 4, at 7 pm in Deane Chapel.

Swimmers Leave Their Mark

Westmont women’s swimming finished ahead of all other NAIA teams in the Pacific Collegiate Swim Conference Championships Feb. 8-11 at East Los Angeles College. In their fourth year, the Warriors were able to beat Fresno Pacific and Alaska-Fairbanks, which have been their biggest rivals.

The meet also provided an opportunity to honor Westmont’s graduating seniors, the first four-year class in program history: Morgan Bienias, Emma Leathers, Bailey Lemmon, Rian Lewandowski, and Gaby Rego. “They have all given so much to this program,” says head coach Jill Jones Lin. “It’s amazing what they’ve done, and they’ve really set the tone for who we want to be as a program. I could not be prouder.” due to his compromised lungs. At the same time, we were looking after a twoyear-old daughter!”

The Warriors are waiting to see how many swimmers have officially qualified for the NAIA National Championships on March 1-4 in Columbus, Ga.

She compared her situation then to like the families now served by her charity. “Of the families we serve 35 percent have premature babies. They are not ready and have heart and kidney issues. We want to serve them as a caring community.”

The Santa Barbara Foundation, which has been the charity’s fiscal sponsor for two years, was presented with a special award received by Jessica Sanchez, Director of Donor Relations.

Among the supporters turning out were Derek Swafford, Robin Himowitz, Missy Sheldon, Renee Grubb, Ron Werft, Ernesto Paredes, Ed Wroblewski, Brianna Aguilar, and Sheela Hunt

Scenes From a Museum

It’s two exhibitions for the price of one at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art!

Scenes from a Marriage: Ed & Nancy Kienholz centers on a recently acquired 1982 masterpiece Bout Round Eleven by Nancy Reddin Kienholz and Edward Kienholz and their collaborative way of working and living.

Thanks to generous loans to supplement works already in the museum’s collection, the focused exhibition features five artworks dating from 1960 to 2007, representing the couple’s work together and also solo.

This is the first museum show featuring their work in Southern California in over a decade. It runs through May 21 in the new Contemporary Art Gallery.

The museum is also presenting Out of Joint, an exhibition of sculptures and large drawings by Joan Tanner, which runs through May 14.

Presenting a total of 20 artworks, including two new installations and a new sculpture, it is the most extensive show of Tanner’s work in California to date and represents a homecoming for an artist whose first solo exhibition was held at the State Street museum in 1967.

All of the artworks are from the past ten years with the earliest, Flying Buttresses, dating from 2013.

Tanner is an artist whose practice over six decades has encompassed many mediums, including paintings, photography, video, sculpture, and assemblage.

Among the gaggle of guests were Betsy Atwater, Lynn Kirst, Ginny Brush, Luke Swetland and Stacey Byers , Nancy Escher, Tom and Lisa Dowling, Larry Feinberg and Starr Siegele, Mary Garton, Gregg Hackethal and Penny Jenkins, Michael and Kimberly Hayes, Hiroko Benko, George Konstantinow and Helene Segal, Joan Tanner, Anne Towbes, Charles and Betsy Newman, and Barry Winick and Linda Saccoccio

A Flipping Good Time

Cirque FLIP Fabrique staged Muse at the Granada, part of the popular UCSB Arts & lectures series.

Playing with gender roles, the pro- duction offered up a refreshing view of contemporary circus with the eclectic performers, whether wearing high heels or shoulder pads, football uniforms or ballet attire, using the cavernous stage to its fullest for the trampolining and acrobatic 75-minute show accompanied by chanteuse Flavia Nascimento singing a selection of French songs.

Just five days later it was a wonderful reverberating performance of a different sort as Japanese troupe Kodō staged its Tsuzumi: One Earth Tour with oriental drums of differing sizes from gigantic to petite.

From their base on Japan’s Sado Island, the 42-year-old group of drummers cultivate a unique aesthetic and sensitivity, reaching out toward a new world culture

Miscellany Page 304 rooted in the rich possibilities of a peaceful coexistence between humanity and nature.

Diamonds Full of Penny

Nearly half a century ago the society glossy Town & Country featured Montecito interior decorator Penny Bianchi in a cover article with the late comedy legend Bob Hope on the backlot of Universal Studies in L.A. in an iconic pose à la America Gothic, the 1930 painting by Grant Wood now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Bubbly Penny was draped in more than $1 million-worth of diamonds from Laykin et Cie, whose salons graced the elegant I. Magnin stores nationwide, which shuttered its doors in 1994. The Santa Barbara store on State Street is now the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Erik Laykin, the visionary grandson of the founder of the bling emporium, decided to celebrate the occasion, as well as the company’s 90th anniversary, with a socially gridlocked bash at the jeweler’s latest location at the Rosewood Miramar.

For the event, Erik had a larger-thanlife reproduction of the original photo re-mastered by Washington D.C.-based restorer, Seth Kaplan, which is being framed and will hang permanently in the store.

“I remember well auditioning for the photo shoot,” says Penny. “I was already an interior decorator, but friends pushed to me to do the audition. When I got off the elevator I was confronted by 200 beautiful women, mostly actresses and models.

“I almost got back on the elevator, but somehow, I got chosen for the part. I wore a Halston gown and was absolutely dripping in diamonds. A security guard was just three feet away at all times!”

Almost, Live from New York

Prince Harry, 38, was thisclose to hosting the iconic NBC show Saturday Night Live as part of the promotional tour for his bestselling memoir, Spare

But talks reportedly stalled at the final hurdle and he went on to appear on other high-profile shows, including 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

An industry insider tells the New York Post’s Page Six: “I know that Harry was all in. He was really serious about doing it. And it would have been great fun as promo for his book.”

Lorne Michaels, the longtime creator and producer of the iconic show at 30 Rock in Manhattan, would still reportedly like to have King Charles’s youngest son on the show even if it’s not to discuss the revelatory memoir. Stay tuned...

‘Fawlty Towers’ Returns

Former Montecito funnyman John Cleese, 83, is set to return to TV screens as Basil Fawlty with a reboot of his famous comedy Fawlty Towers.

The second and final series ended more than 40 years ago, but the former Monty Python actor is writing new episodes of the former BBC program with his comedian daughter Camilla Cleese, 39.

Developed by the actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner ’s Castle Rock Entertainment, the new season, possibly located in the Caribbean, will look back at how cynical and misanthropic Basil Fawlty fares in the modern world.

The original series ran from 1975 to 1979 for 12 episodes. Basil and his daughter decide to reenter the tourism industry and open up a boutique hotel property.

All Saints-by-the-Sea Donates to Transition House

All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church has announced a $65,000 donation along with a volunteer commitment towards supporting Transition Miscellany Page 354 working toward this goal.

Besides providing more public access along the Gaviota Coast, the property of Gaviota Overlook also offers some important ecological benefits. Meredith Hendricks, executive director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, says that under Land Trust management, climate benefits will be enhanced. “Conserving Gaviota Overlook and adding it to Arroyo Hondo Preserve is an act of love and promise for the future – for the land, for the community, and for the life it sustains,” says Hendricks.

Since 1985, the Trust has worked with community groups, willing landowners, and other partners to conserve, restore, and manage open space, wildlife habitat, and family farms and ranches throughout the county. Among those projects are Rincon Bluffs Preserve, Sedgwick Reserve, and Hot Springs Trail in Montecito.

This year, the Land Trust has given the people of Santa Barbara County an amazing valentine. Those who wish to return the sentiment can send a valentine of their own by helping the Trust achieve the final $750,000 to protect, conserve, and make publicly available the “Gaviota Overlook.” For more information or to donate, go to www.sblandtrust.org.