Jim Brady | Credit: Courtesy

Education, coming from the Latin word “Educare,” can be defined more or less as the process of becoming aware and the gaining of useful knowledge. That pretty much defines the Independent.

In my decades as an educator at Santa Barbara Middle School, Dunn Middle School, and some years in Kenya and Thailand and Bolivia, as well as about a hundred or so experiential adventures with kids near and far, there’s been one local constant in my comings and goings, a touchstone to our community: the Santa Barbara Independent.

These days it’s the first thing I open online in the morning to find out how and what our community is doing — especially important now. Even though I read the N.Y. Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, and, yes, sometimes Fox News to try to understand what verbal contortions are needed to support an altered state of reality,the Indy is our paper, our community’s source and hub for news, perspective, and opinion.

My students and I were honored as local heroes when we cycled the Great Divide, Canada to Mexico back in the days of the changing millennium to see what our country was up to at that time. (Seems like that would be a good thing to do again today.)

And the Indy’s inimitable adventurer, Matt Kettmann, was on another team bike ride from the Andes Mountains to the Amazon to support the Rio Beni Health Project. Go, Matt! 

Throughout the last 40 years I have watched the Santa Barbara Independent evolve from its earlier form as the Santa Barbara News and Review into what it is today–a constant and essential record that helps us understand the news, the arts, and the opinions alive in our community. It offers us all a sense connection and well-being. Go, Indy!

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Jim Brady,
Indy+ Subscriber


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