Comments by aspiringdiva
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Posted on August 15 at 6:11 p.m.
By the way: Re the ADA issue, historic landmarks do not require the same level of ADA compliance that other properties do. Certain historic trails in the Garden are part of a designated Santa Barbara County landmark; paving them would destroy an integral element of that landmark. It would be roughly analogous to painting one of the Mission belltowers chartreuse.
Posted on August 15 at 5:40 p.m.
Ego, insecurity, and paucity of character, likely fueled by an overabundance of childhood nerdiness and mommy issues. As for the use of pavers, write it off to lack of taste and a paucity of esthetic sensibility (plus a subconscious desire to turn this naturalistic setting into Kew, the Huntington, or Chicago Bot Garden.) Limited pavers near the entry and central buildings would not be unreasonable, but why those crappy concrete ones? They are sooooo ticky-tackey. Arizona flagstone or other natural stone would be quite suitable.
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Posted on May 7 at 7:41 p.m.
A malfunctioning server would not typically hinder the media's ability to reach the spokesperson of such a visible institution. If the Bot Garden's mouthpiece is doing her job, her cell phone and home phone numbers are in the hands of every news outlet in town. Perhaps the lady's just too busy trying to douse the flames of public opinion to return the Indy's call. As for Ms. Bornstein's perspective, I must have missed something - where exactly in this article did she express her personal viewpoint?
Posted on March 18 at 4:08 p.m.
I've sometimes wondered if this entire Carpinteria Warrior issue isn't about Chumash tribal dignity at all, but solely about payback - discrimination by non-white people against white people.
A few years ago the local Chumash were eager supporters of a history/cultural anthropology re-enactment that took place in our coastal waters; you may have seen the considerable media coverage. A hardy "Chumash" crew paddled a tomol from our offshore islands to Santa Barbara, demonstrating how their forefathers navigated the channel. However, the lead paddler hadn't a single speck of Native American blood - he was 100% Filipino-American.
I've asked this before, and I will ask again: If the Chumash issues with the Carpinteria Warrior are truly about Native American imagery, why didn't they utter a single complaint when a brown-skinned Filipino-American piloted this Chumash tomol?
Posted on March 10 at 10:10 p.m.
Whatever comparisons are being made between the compensation packages of companies like QAD and those offered by the County, there's no similarity when it comes to workload. To be a top performer at a tech company typically requires intense dedication to the job; like the Japanese business model they long ago adopted, these employers expect you to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
The corporate culture can seem solicitous in many ways - on-site services such as a mobile car wash, catered lunch meetings, dry cleaning pick-up and delivery, and chair massages. These conveniences may seem attractive, but they're provided to keep you at the work site - working. The laptop goes home with you at night, and the first thing you do when the alarm sounds at 5:30 a.m. is to respond to your overnight email and vmail from offshore colleagues. (And God forbid if you work in Hong Kong but your California-based supervisor schedules all her weekly video staff meetings at 9 a.m. Pacific.)
When you're on business travel, there's an unvoiced expectation that you'll shoehorn as many appointments and meetings as possible into your day - even if your first one begins at 7:30 a.m., and your last one ends at 10:30 p.m. - in a different city. If you become fatigued or ill from the overload, you never reveal it to your colleagues, or risk being branded a wimp.
It's a ridiculous way to live, but that's the reality of life in a tech company. I'd bet money that there are damned few County employees who can even imagine a job like this - much less perform at this level.
Posted on February 23 at 10:40 p.m.
Hardly - the distinguished Dr. Schneider couldn't even pass for a Santa Barbaran, much less a Chumash Santa Barbaran!
Quercus 68's assessment of Ed's lack of sensitivity to our heritage is spot on. He's lived here 10+ years, yet he's oblivious to what's around him. Not surprising; before the garden's development plans became a marketing issue, Ed Schneider was virtually invisible in his own community. Unlike the CEOs of the other 15-20 museums in our county, he was rarely seen at major events, or participating in other local activities on behalf of his institution.
But hey - maybe that's SOP when one's research (and accompanying political activities) supercede one's fiduciary duties as a working chief executive officer.
As Quercus pointed out, Schneider's obsession is to create a "world class" garden. If those tickey-tackey concrete pavers are any indication, he seems to define "world class" as substituting a junky knock-off of an urban-style botanic garden for an existing garden that is traditionally and purposely naturalistic - and in the process, destroying it's historic, much loved, and very Santa Barbarian design.
Posted on February 23 at 6:38 p.m.
Roger that, Huey, and vaya con dios, Paul Veblen - you and TM were two gents that I greatly admired as a young journalism student; still do...
Posted on February 20 at 3:14 p.m.
Pardon my laughter, but I have a great deal of difficulty believing that Ph.D "Big Ed" Schneider and his minions brought this project before County Planning and Development  without knowing that it was subject to HLAC review. The landmark resolution which protects this public resource is a short piece of text so simple and direct that it's virtually impossibile to misinterpret. What is it about "historic design concept" that you folks don't understand?
Which brings me to the County: Who let this project slip through without HLAC review? If this had happened in the private sector, heads would be rolling.
Posted on February 20 at 1:10 p.m.
I worked at UCSB on two different occasions; once in the 1970s auditing capital equipment for the campus materiel management office, and later for the UCSB Foundation as assistant director of the Chancellor's Council. The jobs were interesting, and the monetary compensation - while not large - was enough for me to rent a decent apartment, clothe and feed myself, help support my child, and have a little left over. At the time, UCSB was considered one of the best places to work in Santa Barbara.
During my years away, I served in several management capacities at two regional museums, and I managed large and complex marketing events for a global tech company. Today I'm looking to downsize to a smaller assignment before I retire. I'd love to return to UCSB, but the salaries are appallingly low in comparison to other local employers.
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Posted on October 31 at 1:45 p.m.
This is nothing new, folks - it's been building for years. We started complaining about LA-style driving way back in the 1980s. It first appeared with people running stop signs and stop lights, something we rarely saw here. For the benefit of you who are young-ish or transplants, this used to be a very courteous community where everybody knew everybody, or treated you like they did.
An unfortunate side effect of our Western White House years is that on slow news days the press corps padded their stories with fluff about our city. Santa Barbara had been a quiet little town up to that point. With this visibility came hoards of transplants from LA and the east coast who were drawn by the city’s charm. Unfortunately they brought their big city driving (and other foul habits) with them, and life was forever changed.
No doubt causal to the bad driving is the overall decline of manners. Santa Barbara’s custom of exchanging pleasantries before doing business – still common today in many other communities - has largely disappeared in our town. What made Santa Barbara unique - a style of living, a way of doing things that was passed down from the region’s Spanish and Mexican era – has disappeared.
Newcomers might call it progress, but those of us who've seen our town's unique character survive numerous other outside influences know better. Santa Barbara, once graced by numerous "Go Home LA" banners hanging from our freeway overpasses every weekend, has turned into Laguna Beach. It's damned sad.
On High Risk on State Street