With all of the rain and cooler temps we’ve experienced along the Central Coast lately, it doesn’t really feel like spring. However, while walking to my car a few days ago, I got my first whiff of jasmine for the season and was pleasantly reminded that, in fact, spring is upon us. For me, the arrival of spring and longer days tends to inspire me to freshen up my home. Although major renovation projects usually require months of planning and a large budget, it is possible to breathe new life into a room without spending a lot of time or money. From changing up the artwork on your walls to paint ..read more

In international conferences, addressing climate change and protecting biodiversity are increasingly being treated as two sides of the same coin. Climate change negatively impacts biodiversity, while biodiversity and healthy ecosystems draw down carbon emissions and lessen the impact of climate extremes. A little more than a year ago, delegates representing 185 countries reached a historic agreement to protect 30 percent of terrestrial lands and 30 percent of marine areas, the ones most critical to biodiversity. After decades of ecosystem destruction and plummeting biodiversity, the goal of th ..read more

Top Home, Earth, and Garden 2024 How Santa Barbara Protects and Beautifies Its Patch of Planet By Tyler Hayden & Indy Staff April 25, 2024 Credit: Greg Trainor This year, we celebrate the 54th Earth Day, and though our planet may be a bit worse for wear, we ought to take comfort in knowing many of us have taken notice, and taken action.  Whether it’s a freshly graduated class of native plant landscapers, a free concierge service that makes EVs much more affordable, or the Santa Barbara businesses that prioritize sustainability over product-pushing, there are signs of energy and ..read more

So much can be said about Edward Fields, an archivist by occupation, but also an archivist in his very nature and soul. Ed was uniquely intelligent, fiercely loyal, driven with an unmatched moral compass and code of honor. He was a mentor, a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend, and a colleague. But perhaps the single most important quality that he would tell you defined him was that he was the father of two daughters, Anna Tereza and Rachel Rose. His devotion and love were unmatched. Edward was born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 8, 1952, to Loretta Josephine Tomaszewicz and Charles Edward Fi ..read more

R U READY, BOOTS?  At first, I figured I must have missed the memo. I would later find out that there had been no memo. For those of us who binge-watch local government porn, last Thursday’s Planning Commission meeting was easily the hottest show in town. A wake-up reminder would have been appreciated.  On the menu was four hours of nonstop, high-octane yammering about the biggest, most game-changiest development to hit Santa Barbara since white men bearing crucifixes crashed Chief Yanonali’s birthday party 300 years ago.  The father-son development tag team of Jim and Matthew T ..read more

Meet a Cohort of Santa Barbara ‘Climate Stewards’ Community Environmental Council Offers Nine-Week Certification Program By Callie Fausey | April 25, 2024 The ocean guardians at Adams Elementary. | Credit: Courtesy After nine weeks of feeling like a college student again — it’s only been two years, but, sigh, those were the days — I am now a certified “Climate Steward,” thanks to Santa Barbara’s Community Environmental Council (CEC) and the University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) division. But since completing the Climate Stewards course, the biggest change I not ..read more

In the words of visionary choreographer and LINES Ballet artistic director Alonzo King, dance is the “soul language,” communicating through movement. Or the self breaking free from the body. Or the lens through which we should see the world, forgoing the limitations of what is “logical.” “Dancers are musicians,” King suggested. “And what they’re playing is the body.” The way he views and speaks about both the world we live in and the worlds he creates is profound — like a mentor taking you by the shoulders to give you a good shake, pulling your mind from the gutter so you can once again smell ..read more

National Poetry Month ends with a Santa Barbara City College poetry workshop and a reading at the Arlington Theatre next week with National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman. However, Santa Barbara poets, myself included, will continue to poet during the coming months. Santa Barbara will host at least four poetry events in May. We are blessed with a vibrant poetry community. At my writing workshop at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, every seat was filled. I was thrilled to see how many people came to spend a couple of hours writing ekphrastic poetry, poetry in response to art. An unlikely cou ..read more

One affordable housing project for Santa Barbara Unified School District teachers and staff is now underway, and a couple are in the works — including a land donation — according to the school board’s ad hoc housing committee update on Tuesday, April 23.  The committee, led by boardmembers Wendy Sims-Moten and Gabe Escobedo, has been meeting for more than a year to explore affordable rental opportunities for teachers and staff on district-owned property.  “In view of the challenges in recruiting and retaining district staff due to exorbitant housing costs — among the highest in the s ..read more

By generalizing standards of the high-low cultural spectrum, the worlds of comic books and grand opera are worlds apart, one pulpy fun and the other lofty by nature. Or are they? The implied question came into focus with Opera Santa Barbara’s sharply-realized and roundly entertaining production of Zorro, which closed out OSB’s season with great crowd-pleasing gusto last weekend at the Lobero Theatre. Both realms, after all, innately indulge in irrationality of dramatic means, free-range melodrama and overstated conflicts of good and evil. Villains and heroes often arrive without shades of gray ..read more