• On Saturday, December 8, help the U.S. Postal Service in its Annual Food Drive by placing non-perishable items in your mail box for pickup. Suggested items, like rice, beans, peanut butter, pasta, and cereal, will be distributed to those in need in our community.
The former women’s honor farm on Hollister Avenue was converted into transitional housing for 18-to-24-year-old former foster kids.
FRINGE PRODUCTS EMPORIUM: Sadly, our appetite for NRBQ shows may go unsated, short of a trip to their Northeastern reunion gigs.
The Santa Barbara City Council on 12/4 conceptually approved plans to build a new children’s museum.
Willard Thompson, author of Dream Helper, says it’s “really a very simple story.” In a sense, that’s true; the action moves right along and adheres very faithfully to the real history of the period from 1786 to the 1820s. However, the theme underlying this adventurous tale is more complex: the culture clash between Spanish soldiers, Franciscan priests, and the native Chumash Indians.
What will it take to bring classical music to the forefront of American culture? Recent business decisions at major record labels have left hundreds of established performers without current recording contracts, and the excitement of new venues like Disney Hall in Los Angeles or our very own soon-to-be-open Granada Theatre can only do so much to offset the aging of classical music’s core audience.
The University of California Institute for Research in the Arts is sponsoring Open Up the Box, an inaugural competition that encourages participants to imagine and apply new solutions to the affordable housing dilemma.
The South Coast Energy Efficiency Partnership will trade one strand of energy-efficient, white LED bulbs for a strand of the old incandescent kind.
Everyone knows that in Santa Barbara you can’t spell pinot noir without ABC-Au Bon Climat (aubonclimat.com), that is. The winery is led by Jim Clendenen, who, since 1982, has made much spectacular juice and just this year was named to the James Beard Foundation’s “Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America.”
For those of us who prefer ingesting grapes in their liquid form but aren’t always sure wine is the best choice, there’s now First Blush. Billed as the “first all-natural premium variety grape juice,” First Blush (firstblushjuice.com) takes wine-quality grapes and makes a cabernet, merlot, chardonnay, and rose from zinfandel.
