– Former U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine, on the doomed reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
Having helped Santa Barbara’s homeless population for 30 years, Ken Williams is no stranger to what it means to be of service. His stint as a U.S. Marine ended upon his return from the Vietnam War, after which he graduated from UCSB with a degree in psychology.
I saw it coming, and couldn’t stop it: My parents were going to buy me Crocs for Christmas, and I was going to have to take them like a man.
The Opera Festival continues this week with A Masked Ball, considered to be one of Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpieces and contains some of his most elegant and powerful romantic duets. Yefim Maizel returns to Santa Barbara to direct A Masked Ball.
The members of the Eclipse Quartet-Sara Parkins and Sarah Thornblade, violins; Joanna Hood, viola; and Maggie Parkins, cello-face inward for several good reasons. They need to look in each others’ eyes as they play because the shifting lines and unexpected turns of contemporary music are difficult, and because they have to look inward, as films play on a screen overhead.
It’s Monday night in Isla Vista and St. Athanasius Orthodox Church is serving up its weekly dinner for the homeless. A dozen or so bedraggled-looking souls wander onto the tidy, concrete patio for what will likely be their first and only square meal of the day. Tonight the crowd consists only of men, and they largely keep to themselves, carrying plates piled with food to the picnic tables and eating quietly. Milling about in his clerical blacks and white collar is the church’s rector, Father Jon-Stephen Hedges, a broad-shouldered, distinguished-looking man in his late fifties.
A new HIV test that returns results in 20 minutes is now available through the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department. The quick turnaround is expected to increase the number of people getting treatment and decrease the number who spread the disease while in a state of denial. Up to a third of those tested using conventional lab procedures do not return for results.
Four local high school basketball players were nominated for the prestigious 2007 McDonald’s All-American High School Basketball Team. Santa Barbara High School senior center Trevor Nowitzki, Dos Pueblos senior guard Julyan “Ju Ju” Stone, Lompoc’s Anthony Burtley, and Santa Ynez Valley Union’s Christine Martin were named among the 2,500 best high school basketball players in the country.
Soon after a gracious greeting and seating, your server brings to the table a saucer with an overturned condiment cup. With a flourish, the cup is lifted away, and a pool of golden olive oil rich with herbs and sun-dried tomato bits spreads across the saucer.
Band of Horses’ Everything All the Time: Aside from gracing their debut LP with the most appealing album title ever, the threesome Band of Horses is also the best thing to come out of Seattle since coffee, merging Dylan-esque lyrics with soulful guitars and tear-jerker melodies that were clearly born of the Northwest rain.
