Tag Archives: South Coasting

The Doors of Opportunity are Just Down the Road

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The doors of The Opportunity Shop (127 W. Canon Perdido) have opened windows of opportunity to budget-minded furniture buyers since 1929. While many locals are familiar with the store’s high-end used furniture, they may not be aware that the nonprofit Work Training Programs took over the shop in 2001 to expand its ability to train people in viable skills such as furniture re-upholstery, merchandising, refinishing and janitorial services.

Offering a wide selection of furniture for every room in the house, there often are some real treasures to be found at The Opportunity Shop. Buyer and Store Manager Mike Blaha said he tries to feature a variety of items. A recent visit to the showroom revealed a pleasingly eclectic mix, including a straight-out-of-High-Noon post office counter (which sold while I was there), an old Mexican door converted into a table, a roll top desk, a wood type-setting file cabinet and an abstract handmade Japanese rug, along with less exotic couches, dining room sets, chairs, bookcases, end tables and office furniture.

Blaha prescreens all of the items, which are a mixture of purchases, tax-deductible donations and consignments. “I go there, bid on it, clean it up, put it on the floor and clean it up when it’s sold,” he said. “We try to shoot for at least 10% donations and we’ve just recently started doing consignment. I’d say some of the larger, higher end things are consignment … it’s not worth the paperwork to do it for small items.”

Interior designers frequent the Opportunity Shop, said Matt Armor, a former Work Training Programs job coach and group home staffer who now oversees the store. “There are people coming in here all the time who’ve been walking in here since the 70s and 80s and they still come in just to do it. It’s part of their thing,” said Armor.

“There’s a guy who comes in looking for teak all the time,” said Blaha. Other collectors keep an eye out for Southwestern blankets, old oak pieces and 50s modern retro kitchen stuff. “Anything that’s excellent and cheap sells. Dressers sell really well but I’d say bookcases are always the number one thing,” he said.

The Opportunity Shop offers something for almost everybody and they get new items in daily. For more information call 962.7233.

About Work Training Programs

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Work Training Programs, which was established in Santa Barbara in 1964 to provide independent living and employment support services that enable individuals with disabilities or disadvantages to live and work as productive members of their community.

“It’s always been in my interest to have some self supporting aspects of Work Training Programs, things that we can rely on the community to support perhaps but to get out from under reliance on government support,” said CEO Cynthia Burton. “The idea of having a business that would provide work experience for our participants plus being kind of a self supporting entity” was what made The Opportunity Shop such an attractive venture to her. “It just seemed like a good fit for us … (with a) variety of skill building experiences that our participants could enjoy.”

Client Lori DeBoer is one such participant. She works three days a week at The Opportunity Shop, helping to clean the shop and refurbish furniture. “Mike (Blaha) is great to work for. He’s good. I like him,” said DeBoer, who is developmentally disabled. She checks in with her job developer on a regular basis and will let her know when she is ready to learn something else or move on to a full time position.

The job developers find jobs based on what people are interested in, said Burton. About 40 different local employers now work with the program, including Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, Sansum Clinic, KEYT and Home Depot, in addition to The Opportunity Shop.

Headquartered at 315 W. Haley St., each year Work Training Programs serves 1,800 clients from Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Ventura and Los Angeles Counties.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on April 8, 2004.

City planners aim to define standards

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Based on the philosophy that “we know what we like (or don’t like) when we see it,” Santa Barbara City Planners are reaching out to the community to help define standards for residential designs.

More than 100 people gathered recently — in the first of a series of neighborhood visual survey workshops — using nifty real time technology to evaluate pictures of houses based on whether they were suitable for Santa Barbara and if the size of the home was compatible with the size of the lot. Participants were also asked their views about the evaluation and notification processes for renovations of homes in their neighborhoods.

Favorite design features were not surprising, said City Planner Bettie Hennon. All of the top-rated homes featured large front yard setbacks with a lot of green space. Other popular architectural elements included front porches, “wedding caking” of second stories, garage door setbacks or tandem garages and varied rooflines and wall articulations.

The homes locals adamantly disliked were tall (three story), skinny houses without yards, typically seen in other beach communities along the coast.

There are over 23 communities in the state looking at similar regulations to control or guide single family homes, said Mark Broudeur, principal of RRM Design Group, the consulting firm hired to assist the city. He characterized this as a “super size generation,” noting that in 1950, the average size of a single-family home was 983 square feet, which jumped to 2,265 square feet in 2000.

The initial survey also found that 88% of people favored early notification of neighbors doing remodels. In addition, 73% said that remodels in the neighborhood increased the value of their property. More than half of the attendees (58%) said we should set maximum home size per lot size.

The ultimate goal of updating the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance (nicknamed “The Big House Ordinance”) is to restructure new single-family home and remodel regulations to reflect community preferences and expectations. Planning staff and the steering committee — comprised of representatives from City Council, the Planning Commission, the Architectural Board of Review, the Historic Landmarks Commission and the Allied Neighborhood Association — will make recommendations on topics like ABR review triggers, neighborhood compatibility definitions, neighbor project notification protocol and potential additional regulations related to floor to area ratios.

Smaller neighborhood workshops will be held to discuss more specific guidelines. Here is the schedule:

Upper East and Downtown: April 7 at 6:30 p.m. in the MacKenzie Park Meeting Room.

Eastside and Westside: April 13 at 6:30 p.m. at the Louise Lowry Davis Center.

Mesa: April 21 at 6:30 p.m. at SHIFCO, 418 Santa Fe Place.

Hillside Areas: April 28 at 6:30 p.m. at the MacKenzie Park Meeting Room.

Northside and Hitchcock: May 12 at 6:30 p.m. at the MacKenzie Park Meeting Room.

For more information contact Heather Baker at 564.5470 or hbaker@ci.santa-barbara.ca.us.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon

RV Ordinance Parked

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Councilman Das Williams’ effort to tweak the city’s RV parking ordinance — to allow violators to enroll in an authorized overnight parking program, rather than pay the fine or have their vehicle towed — fell just short of approval on Tuesday night.

The proposal came about a year after the City Council passed controversial new laws, in an effort to drive RV dwellers off city streets.

The program has generally been touted as a success. There were an estimated 300- 400 RVs parked on city streets last year. Today Lt. Paul McCaffrey of the Santa Barbara City Police Department projects there are between 20 and 40 vehicles.

When the law was passed, Catholic Charities stepped in to coordinate a program to allow RV dwellers to park legally overnight in specified lots. New Beginnings, a counseling center that provides assistance with job placement, substance abuse, communication and other life skills, will take over that program in April.

Recently additional churches and nonprofits have allowed RVs to park in their lots at night, but there is some debate as to whether the remaining people living in their vehicles will take advantage of the legal parking program.

“People have to know about a program in order to participate in it,” said Councilwoman Helene Schneider, who supported Williams’ proposal. Schneider also serves on the City-County Homeless Advisory Committee.

” It’s not a lack of information that’s keeping people out of lots. I have the feeling that they are very much aware of the resources that are available to them,” said Lt. McCaffrey. “The shelters are not always filled to capacity and there are people that sleep outdoors. On the surface it’s a hard thing to understand.”

Williams urged the council to “balance compassion and accountability when dealing with less fortunate members of our community” and support his proposal. However, Mayor Marty Blum pointed out the things the city has done to help the homeless, including funding 5,000 low cost housing units and multiple programs and shelters.

The vote was 4-3, with Mayor Blum and Councilmen Brian Barnwell, Roger Horton and Dr. Dan Secord voting against Williams’ request to have staff work on the changes. Williams and Councilwomen Iya Falcone and Schneider favored the effort.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on March 25, 2004.

Hillside House, neighbors at odds

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Hidden Valley residents decry ‘out of context’ expansion.

One of Santa Barbara’s last parcels of open space — in Hidden Valley — may be turned into apartments and condominiums if Hillside House’s development proposal is approved.

The project was presented to the public as a way for the nonprofit Hillside House to ensure its financial future, which has become precarious in the wake of Medi-Cal cutbacks and the increased costs of nurses, worker’s compensation and the like.

Hillside House owns 27 acres set in a valley off Veronica Springs Road, of which about 10 are developable.

The idea of developing on the property has been floating around for at least 10 years, said Hillside House Executive Director Pam Flynt. But it wasn’t until last summer that Hillside House contacted the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Barbara about building on the site. They’ve since put together a development team — Bermant Development Company, Hillside House, the City and County Housing Authorities and Peikert Group Architects — which is proposing to build 138 affordable and workforce apartments and 40 market-rate condominiums.

While the City of Santa Barbara was quick to approve annexation of the property from the county, “(The proposed) 178 units is a huge development for a city development,” said Mayor Marty Blum. “This is a big deal.”

The unpretentious neighborhood, off Los Positas Road near Portesuello Avenue, still looks much like it did in the 1970s, without the obvious remodels and McMansions to which so many local tracts have succumbed.

Not surprisingly, many of the neighbors are in a swivet about the project’s mass and potential traffic impacts. “It doesn’t fit into the neighborhood … the size seems completely out of context,” said Shannon O’Bryan, a neighbor who spoke to both the City Council and Planning Commission.

“You’re looking at a perpetuity of traffic jams,” said Brian Burd, another neighbor, who also expressed concern to the City Council that the project would be “greasing the wheels for high-density development of the surrounding neighborhood.”

Neighbor Ken Balmy spoke about the “rather callous disregard for the quality of the neighborhood.” He complained that the project is being “steamrolled through the process.”

While acknowledging that she anticipated a negative response from the neighbors, Flynt disagrees that they should have been informed about the plans earlier. “It was the appropriate time, before we were talking officially to the city. We certainly discussed going to them earlier, but we needed to wait until we had something to tell them. We were putting together … our plan in terms of ideally what we would like to do.”

“I have not heard anyone criticize what we do here or the fact that maybe it’s a service that’s needed and necessary. I think the criticism is about the project and how they feel that’s going to affect them,” said Flynt.

In addition to providing apartments for residents, Hillside House is hoping to be able to provide affordable housing for some of its 75 employees, 15 of whom now commute from outside the South Coast.

The Planning Commission’s initial concept review telegraphed a lot of compromises if the project is to go forward. “I don’t think that the mass, bulk and scale of this is compatible with the neighborhood,” said Commissioner Harwood White, describing the development as “a high-density intrusion into the largest chunk of open space in the region.”

“I wonder about the feasibility, given the serious traffic impacts,” said Commissioner Jonathan Maguire. This is really just the beginning, he said, advising the applicants to expect the Planning Commission review to take a year or more.

The Hillside House team plans to return to the Planning Commission with revisions.

Community Development Director Paul Casey emphasized that the project would require a lengthy review process. “We’re just kind of getting started. … We’ve got a long way to go.”

Hillside House’s new program less restrictive

Along with providing affordable housing for its employees, if the development project is approved it will bring a significant shift in the lives of Hillside House clients. Currently the program’s 59 residents — primarily with cerebral palsy, autism, mental retardation and epilepsy — live together in a dorm atmosphere, with a licensed nurse there 24 hours a day, said Executive Director Pam Flynt.

In the new set-up, residents would live in a less restrictive environment, about six people to an apartment. Rather than an exclusively Hillside House population, the second and third floors of the complex would be rental units.

The opportunity to mainstream residents of Hillside House is a positive value, said Mickey Flacks, who sits on the County Housing Authority.

The Tricounties Regional Center (which makes referrals to Hillside House) would also like to see smaller units and smaller programs, said Flynt. “In each home, there would be a living room, a kitchen (and) they would have some say in creating their own dinner.” She also noted that residents who were capable would be able to help with laundry and other chores.

While there would still be a staff member in each house whenever residents were there (during the day residents are out in the community participating in day programs), 24-hour licensed nursing care would only be available in selected houses whose residents require that level of care.

Reaction from the families has been a little bit mixed, Flynt said. “We’re going to have to work through who’s going to need what level of care, and we’ll be able to have some variety in the types of care that we have in different homes and we can then work with placing our residents in the program that’s going to best meet their needs.”

Other projects pending

Hillside House’s proposed project is just one of many potential changes to the Hidden Valley neighborhood.

The Santa Barbara School Districts owns property nearby. “Originally this site was going to be used as a school site but the development costs are prohibitive and there is declining enrollment,” said Dave Hetyonk, director of facilities and operations. The board recently created a Property District Advisory Committee, tasked to make recommendations about the use of property that is not needed for school purposes.

“They could advise the board to sell, lease, rent or do any number of things,” said Hetyonk, who is hoping for a recommendation by September.

“We’ve tried (to master plan the Hidden Valley area) and made a real effort with the school district about five years ago,” said Community Development Director Paul Casey. “The cost of a connecting road (to Los Positas) was very difficult. … It added $4 million to the school site cost.”

Another player in the area is Valle Verde Retirement Home on Calle de los Amigos, which proposes to convert 63 one-bedroom units to two-bedroom units, potentially doubling its occupancy.

Bill Bertka also owns 57 acres at the end of Alan Road that he would like to develop someday. He told the Planning Commission he would support the Hillside House development and urged them to take other future developments, such as his, into consideration when planning the project.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on March 18, 2004.

Agent Cody Banks: Destination London

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Agent Cody Banks 2As any honest parent of a young child will tell you, there are days when you’ll happily shell out $40 in quick cash in exchange for popcorn and a couple of hours of relative peace and quiet. Save “Agent Cody Banks: Destination London” for one of those days … or at least for a rainy one.

While not quite up to the standards of “Spy Kids” — the James Bond of the kid spy movie genre — the first Cody Banks film slid by the on the charm of lead actor Frankie Muniz and the somewhat amusing contrast between his nerd by day/spy by night indoctrination into the CIA.

Like the first film, the fate of the free world is at stake, the adults are mostly dumb and Cody’s love interests are blond, non-threatening, pre-teen fantasy girls (Hilary Duff in the U.S. and Hannah Spearritt in London). On the plus side, there’s no real violence, actions have consequences and the plot moves somewhat logically — if you can get over a magical clarinet which convinces an orchestra of musical protegees that Cody is one of them. This is a movie that knows its audience and doesn’t overshoot.

The kids are likeable enough and it’s difficult not to smile at a movie where everyone from the Queen of England to the dashiki-wearing prime minister of an unnamed country rocks out to “War, What is it Good For (Absolutely Nothing).”

Unless my son inherits my discerning appetite for chick flicks in the next year or so, the next rainy day we’ll probably be cueing up for Cody Banks 3.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on March 18, 2004.

Talking Kindness with Anita Roddick

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anita-roddickA walking billboard for her belief that, “enthusiasm can’t be taught, it must be caught,” Dame Anita Roddick recently delivered a lecture on “Kindness as a Key to Humanity’s Future” to a crowd of about 200 UCSB students and people from the community.

“Kindness doesn’t have to be random … It can and should be practiced tenaciously, “said the founder of The Body Shop, who is a frequent speaker on corporate responsibility and social justice issues. Certainly a practitioner of kindness herself, Roddick said she believes that “We need to measure progress by human development, not GNP.” And she has walked the talk at The Body Shop for more than 28 years while spawning 1,980 stores and 77 million customers around the world, according to her website.

“I’m here not in the guise of a successful business person but as an activist for peace, said Roddick, a part-time Montecito resident who serves as a trustee for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, sponsor of the event.

Nonetheless, she’s managed to intertwine her business with her personal values in a way that few corporate leaders have. “We have to put human rights at the very, very center of every trade relationship. Gender balance is also essential. We need to involve women at all levels on an equal basis as men,” she said.

“Businesses must show more developed emotions than fear and greed. If business comes with no moral sympathy or honorable code of behavior, God help us all,” said Roddick.

She challenged the audience to imagine a world where institutions such as religion, the media and the legal system were required to be kind, in turn generating dialogue from the audience about the dynamic between truth and forgiveness, aggressive kindness and the role of the media in modernizing youth around the world.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon

Get Your Kicks

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Soccer has dribbled its way into becoming one of the most popular sports in town, but that wasn’t always the case. It was really considered a foreign sport when Cam Camarena came to Santa Barbara to play for UCSB in 1974.

Camarena is credited with bringing AYSO (the American Youth Soccer Organization) to the community in 1976. “I thought that their philosophy was exactly what soccer needed,” Camarena said.

Indeed, the philosophy — based on the concepts that soccer is open to all, everyone plays, and teams are balanced, with an emphasis on positive coaching and good sportsmanship — is still at the forefront of the organization almost 30 years later.

After an initial struggle to popularize the sport — that first year AYSO had just six teams of boys only — over the years Santa Barbara’s seen super moms morph into soccer moms. “Last year we had 256 teams (almost 3,000 kids),” said John Maloney, the AYSO commissioner for this region.

“No matter what happens, you play three-fourths of the game (up from half the game in previous years),” he said. There’s a huge difference between that and more traditional competitive team situations, he said. “But more game time helps develop the skills.”

As their expertise develops, many kids leave behind the politically correct world of AYSO for the more competitive club teams, which has caused some conflicts over the years.

“This town has gone through a little bit of the club wars. We’ve got several prominent soccer personalities

in this town. And different attempts to form a club that kind of reflects the diversity of this town,” said UCSB Men’s Head Coach Tim VomSteeg.

“One of the reasons that everybody hated everybody is that kids were trying to play both (AYSO and club teams) and that upset people because you’re going to let somebody down,” said Camarena.

“(In AYSO) there’s no punishment for not coming to practice,” said Andy Roteman, coach administrator for the organization. Without the balanced team requirement, the kids who play club experience a higher level of competition. “The cream gets to play with the cream,” he said. “We’ve had coaches take their team club because the kids want to keep playing together. … Then they pay $50 to $60 per month to belong to a club team (versus $80 per season for AYSO), plus tournament fees and traveling. So where is (a) parent going to give their allegiance to?”

Partly in response to the issues between the club teams and AYSO, a soccer coalition was started about two years ago. “We’ve been meeting once a month to work together instead of working against each other. Even though so many kids are involved with soccer, we still have less fields than everyone else because we’re always fighting within ourselves,” said Camarena, who currently coaches the Legends girl’s soccer team. One of the agreements achieved through the coalition is that club teams would not recruit AYSO players during the regular (fall) season.

“As popular as soccer is, I think one thing that has really hurt the overall development at the highest level has been the politics of this town; unfortunately, there always seems to be (politics) at every place you go. You have the recreational people thinking that the competitive level is wrong and vice versa. But I think that has changed in the last two years,” said Camarena.

AYSO’s Maloney agreed that things are improving. Currently, AYSO has a good working relationship with both FCSB and Legends (the two leading clubs in town), he said. “That wasn’t always the case.

“There’s a lot to be gained by the soccer organizations working together. There are not enough soccer fields in Santa Barbara, and the situation may become worse. AYSO has used UCSB’s soccer fields for the past five years, but it doesn’t look too good (that) they’ll be there in the fall,” Maloney said. “When UCSB instituted parking fees last year, it allowed AYSO to pre-sell discount tickets to parents. Now they want to raise fees, plus the new parking services automated system isn’t capable of handling our volume,” said Maloney, who has been working to come to an agreement with the university. In addition to an estimated $60,000 in parking fees, AYSO now pays about $28,000 per year to use the fields and monitor parking. “It definitely isn’t an inexpensive venue.”

If negotiations with USCB fall apart, AYSO has the right of first refusal to use Girsh Park in the fall, Maloney said. It would be less expensive than UCSB, but there are fewer fields, so games would have to be played on Saturdays and Sundays, instead of just Saturdays, which could cause conflicts for some families.

One of the things Camarena would like to see the soccer coalition do is bring the community together to buy land to develop dedicated soccer fields. “It would be a dream come true to have community soccer fields.”

Soccer for grown-ups

Part of the popularity of soccer is attributable to being able to start playing at such a young age — AYSO starts at 41/2 — but opportunities to play also abound for adults.

At the recreational level there’s the “huff and puff league” (HAPCO). “(People) come out there to have fun and don’t worry about the sport; it’s really a social recreational event. They’re probably a bunch of people that never played soccer before but their kids are playing, so they’re now trying to come out and play themselves a bit,” said Dennis Van Alphen, who founded the website SBSoccer.com five years ago as a resource for centralized local soccer information.

Also popular for moms and dads was the PAYSO (parents of AYSO league) that later turned into the more competitive Santa Barbara Adult Soccer League, said Van Alphen. Limited to players 30 years and older, he said, the league is “still competitive but not as competitive as the others. There are guys that are over 50 but the majority are in their late 30s.”

He said the best league in town is the Central Coast League. “One of the teams, Durango, just won the state’s championship a week ago. … They have a bunch of players from Westmont and SBCC and UCSB, among other players that are at a good level.”

There’s also the Southern Union Soccer League, said Van Alphen. Finding enough fields is a challenge for the adult leagues as well as the kids. He said the only fields with lights that are available to adult leagues are at La Colina and Santa Barbara junior high schools.

For more information on adult soccer, visit www.SBSoccer.com.

Paying the way to play

With so much focus on youth soccer, there’s some debate as to whether it really paves the way to a college scholarship, as some parents seem to think. “In Division 1, you are allowed basically 9.9 full scholarships and most teams carry a roster of 30 full time players. We have eight scholarships, so we’re not quite fully funded,” said UCSB Men’s Head Soccer Coach Tim VomSteeg.

“The potential of a kid receiving money is very small in terms of the scheme of things. … At USCB we average about 20 emails and letters a day from players, four to five tapes a week. … If I go on a trip for week or something you’ll have 90-100 emails from kids,” said VomSteeg, whose team has been ranked in the top 20 for the past two years. There are 200 Division 1 colleges, and probably six new players added to each program each year, so that’s 1,200 spots opening up, he said.

The competition starts early. Top players from AYSO are routinely recruited to play on club teams where the talk of college begins in earnest. “Mostly what will happen is you’ll go to a major tournament and you’ll put out a thing with your name and stats, so you can email (college coaches),” said Julia Bottiani, a Goleta Valley Junior High eighth grader who “plays up” on the Legends under-19 team. “My coach, he tells all the juniors, ‘you should be emailing to the schools you want to go to.’ ”

Of the graduates of the last year’s two Legends teams, coach Cam Camarena said at least 25 are playing college soccer on scholarships, an impressively high percentage.

Division 1 coaches are allowed five evaluations of a player, so club tournaments are very efficient. “The top kids are all playing against each other. With top clubs, (you) have a good change to see kids that are not only good players but are playing against good players,” said VomSteeg. There’s very little chance of a San Diego State recruiter coming to Santa Barbara to watch a high school game.

With more and more kids playing in this country, VomSteeg says soccer is really reaping the benefits. “We’re able in soccer, for the first time, to pick up the really good athletes that in years before would have played other sports. Thanks to really good contracts for pros, what’s changed now, we have some kids that would have played basketball or baseball, and instead they are choosing to play soccer.”

Behind the scenes of Soccer Moms

‘Hotter than the other moms” is the reputation Santa Barbara soccer moms have around the tournaments. They’re fitter and more stylish, said playwright David Starkey, who takes an entertaining look at the force behind the sidelines with his play, Soccer Moms, opening tonight at the Center Stage Theatre. “You go away to tournaments and they’re checking each other out at the breakfast bar.

“The intensity of the moms on the sidelines was really astonishing to me,” said the poet and English professor, who three years ago migrated from Chicago to marry into an enthusiastic soccer family.

“I thought you could do a play where all the action takes place on the sidelines.” While true soccer moms focus on the field “with laser-like attention for whole game,” in the play, the parents also have their share of offsides R-rated adventures.

Set in Santa Barbara, Starkey’s “gentle satire” has played in North Hollywood and Seattle, but tonight will be its local debut. After one show, Starkey heard a theatergoer say, “I hope no one from Santa Barbara is in audience.” But he thinks people will enjoy laughing at themselves. No one more so than his wife, Sandy, whom he describes as “one of the more intense soccer moms in town.

“Real life is not nearly the soap opera I make it out to be … but there are some cases of life imitating art,” Starkey said.

For example, in the play one of the moms gets a personal trainer to help her daughter’s soccer. “I wrote that and then subsequently Sandy got a personal trainer for (daughter) Julia,” he laughed.

Soccer Moms is the premier show of New Bard Productions, founded by Starkey and Jinny Webber. E. Bonnie Lewis directs a cast that includes Michelle Osborne, Deborah Helm, Tiffany Story and Mike Walker.

Soccer Moms plays at the Center Stage Theatre, upstairs in Paseo Nuevo, at 8 p.m. today through Saturday with a 2 p.m. Feb. 28 matinee. Tickets are $15 general admission and $13 for student and seniors. Call 963.0408 or visit www.centerstagetheatre.org.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon

Generations plug in

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From womb to tomb, technology is changing how we communicate and connect with our families. Leslie Dinaberg boots up, logs in and decrypts the source code of our tech-savvy lives.

Image courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

Bonding before birth

Starting almost at conception, people bond with their children in ways they never used to in the early stages of pregnancy, said Sociocultural Anthropologist Francesca Bray, a professor at UCSB.

“Already at six weeks you knew if it was a boy or girl … you start to relate to it, you give it a name, you can circulate the ultrasound to all of your friends. How many people have an ultrasound pinned up to their fridge it’s the first picture of the baby,” said Bray, who has conducted extensive research on the roles on new technology in everyday life.

Babytech

When the baby’s born, the archive takes shape. “The social pressure that we had to get those photos up on the Internet for the grandparents and the in-laws was tremendous,” said a new mother. “And you have to keep those photos coming, really on a weekly basis, to keep them happy.”

Not only are those early childhood memories stored on the computer, they’re also on the television, thanks to camcorders, and in miniature form on cell phones and PDAs. Now that we’re spending more time in our cars than ever before, SUVs and other family-friendly cars come equipped with DVD players to keep the back seat peanut gallery constantly entertained.

Then there’s the “nanny cam” (a stuffed bear wired with a video camera), the technology of choice for freaked-out parents afraid to leave their little darling in another person’s care. Upscale daycare centers even offer 24-hour Internet surveillance for parents while they’re at work.

“Technologies are marketed to moms not as a fulfillment of desire but as a fulfillment of responsibility,” said Bray.

Keeping track of the kids

There’s a whole new set of perceived needs that have grown up around these new technologies, including the need to know where your family members are and what they’re doing every hour of the day.

“My 11-year-old daughter Kyle went on a play date last week and emailed me a picture of her and her friend all dressed up, and the picture was taken from a cell phone,” said Stacy DeBroff, author of The Mom Book and founder of momcentral.com.

“This last summer, my son Brooks (9) went to sleep-away camp in New Hampshire for seven weeks. He was completely fine with the separation, but I was a wreck,” said DeBroff. But every day, the camp took dozens of digital pictures of the campers and emailed the whole day’s worth to parents.

Teens lead the way

Teens often are the instigators of the family’s first foray onto the Internet and end up teaching other family members how to use it, according to research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “These new developments reverse the tradition of parents as teachers and children as learners and can play a beneficial role in family life as the teens gain in self-respect and show their competence to their parents,” found the study.

“Children have the most facility with new technologies but parents and grandparents are inexorably drawn in too because of their family roles. They have to learn to click a mouse,” observed Bray.

As the kids become more web-savvy, parents naturally develop concerns about the amount of time that their children spend online and about the people and material they encounter in cyberspace.

“Obviously one of the disadvantages of this amazing information technology is that you don’t know who your children are talking to. You don’t know where or what sites they’re downloading and trying to keep some degree of control over your children is something that a lot of parents feel very strongly about,” said Bray. Parental control software has developed to help address those concerns. In fact, MSN parental control software has joined the ranks of Clairol Nice ‘N Easy, Kellogg’s breakfast cereals and Campbell’s soup in earning the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

Short attention span theater

Email is often billed as the “killer app” for the Internet. Many report their email use increases their communication with key family and friends and enhances their connection to them, but instant messaging or “IM” has attracted close to 13 million teenagers, according to the Pew study. “Talking to buddies online has become the information-age way for teens to hang out and beat back boredom.” Parents are also getting in on the act, with many claiming that it’s easier and more pleasant to type in “dinner’s ready” than it is to yell upstairs to the kids.

Similarly, as cell phones have become more pervasive, teenagers have been the first to embrace text messaging. According to an informal survey by researchers from Rutgers University, half of students with cell phone text-messaging capabilities have used them in class. It’s like passing notes, but harder to get busted.

In addition to altering how teens interact with their friends, technology is also introducing new dynamics into family life. Pew’s research found that in their overall judgment, parents think that the Internet’s role in their children’s lives beneficial. “More than half of parents of online youth believe the Net is generally a good thing for their children and only six percent believe it is bad for their children. Some 38 percent do not think it has had an effect on their child one way or the other.”

Connecting from college

As teenagers grow up and leave home, technology becomes even more critical in their communication with family. With time zone differences and late night hours kept by many college students, email is often the easiest way to reach mom and dad. In fact, the Pew survey found that Internet users in college are twice as likely to have online discussions compared to the overall online population.

Gran gets in the game

Technology has also made it easier to communicate with Grandma and Grandpa. “Even though many other online activities hold limited appeal to senior citizens, email has been completely embraced by Internet users over the age of 65,” found the Pew Survey. “Often encouraged by younger family members to start using email, wired seniors can be fervent message senders. In our surveys, their use of email has typically held steady or marginally surpassed the overall trend of all users.”

Tales from the grave

Reaching out to family through technology can also continue when the older generation is no longer around. For example, Memorypost.com was originally developed as a memorial site for company owner Tosh Bulger’s Great Aunt Sevelta when she passed away. “We decided to make a website where people could go and leave stories,” he said. Researching genealogy has also become a favorite online pursuit.

The big picture

Most of the new technologies are reinforcing existing social values, rather than transforming them, according to Bray. “What they do do is they extend the range of social bonding and of geographic distance that can be counted within our networks of intimacy,” she said. “Perhaps what they’re doing is not so much revolutionizing the way we think about families and technology and domestic relations so much as reinforcing them.”

Universal translator

Lost in cyberspace? Here’s a quiz to see how up you are on online speak.

1. IMHO means

a. I’m at home

b. I’m a lady of the evening

c. In my humble opinion

2. GTG stands for

a. The sorority, Gamma Theta Gamma

b. Golly, that’s great

c. Got to go

3. B/F

a. Big friggin deal

b. Beer and fries

c. Boyfriend

4. ITA

a. Internet time of arrival

b. I’m a teaching assistant

c. I totally agree

5. TTFN

a. Too tall for nerds

b. Talk to friends needlessly

c. Ta ta for now

The answers are all “c” IIRC (if I recall correctly).

FWIW (for what it’s worth) there are some great websites with smilies, acronyms and emoticons, including www.cknow.com/ckinfo/emoticons.htm and www.computeruser.com.

L8TR (later).

LOTA (lots of thundering applause).

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on February 9, 2004.

CALM Design House Showcases View

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The first thing that strikes you is the view. Not only can you see the forest through the trees, but the ocean glimmers invitingly through the oaks as well. Talk about a perfect canvas. Architect William Harrison took full advantage of the prime property in creating this spectacular Montecito showhouse to benefit CALM.

Harrison described the house as mission revival with a heavy arts and crafts influence, but there’s really only one word for the property at 610 Cima Vista Lane — gorgeous.

For 20 years, CALM has raised money locally for child abuse prevention and assistance services through design showcases. “This is a departure for us, our homes in the past have had different designers in each room,” said CALM Development Director Rebecca J. Adler.

While the long-established form of showhouse fundraisers have been very popular and will continue in 2005, this was an offer the nonprofit couldn’t refuse. Traditional Home Magazine, which does showhouses across the country, had paired with Harrison Design Associates to produce the home in Montecito as an editorial feature when they approached CALM about being the charity beneficiary. “It was really exciting to hear about … the scale and grandeur of this project for us. And also to call the other charities who Traditional Home had participated with, they all said, ‘this is the best thing that’s every happened to us,'” said Adler.

Built around a nine-acre protected oak tree conservancy, the house is impressive for its serene beauty and its feeling of being at one with the land, which is even more impressive considering it was built and furnished to perfection in just one year.

“All of the players here are equally as important,” said Robert Young, west coast editor of Traditional Home. “… You have Harrison (Design Associates) who’s the architect and they also are the developer, and Giffin and Crane is the contractor, CALM is the charity, then Barry Dixon is the (interior) designer and Katie O’Reilly Rogers is the landscape architect. … We gave over 100 percent and 200 percent and they’ve delivered. Everybody’s just been extraordinary and everybody’s enjoyed working on it.”

“There was good clear concise direction on this job at all times,” said Geoff Crane president and COO of the builder, Giffin and Crane. “In a project like this, everything has to fall into place at once. The landscaping had to start at a time it wouldn’t normally be starting. As soon as we had an area that we could confine and barricade off (they started) excavation and grading and planting. It was a little unconventional,” said Crane, who credited his Project Manager Lindsey Adams with keeping construction running smoothly.

With the tight schedule, one of the biggest challenges was scheduling. Visitors to the showcase will enter the house through a charming green and white motor court, surrounded by white camellias, white azalea, field grown boxwood and in the center of it all a white cyclamen tree. “We had to crane in this big tree before they finished the arch,” said landscape architect Rogers. “The tree wasn’t ready to be brought up for three weeks and they had to get the arch up because of the stonemason’s schedule.”

“The stone on the side of the house is literally from the land,” said Young. “These are all hand carved from these big boulders that came from Santa Barbara sandstone.” Once you enter the house, the feeling of indoor/outdoor fusion continues, thanks in part to the well-designed windows that maximize the views, and also to Dixon’s extremely textural, almost primal choices. “I think Barry took … this concept of earth, wind and fire and kind of just being inspired by the elements … that are here in Santa Barbara … everything that makes it such a magical place,” said Young.

The master bath’s oversized shower features very unusual glass tile by Walker Zanger, tumbled to look like sea glass. You could get waterlogged trying to choose between that and the dazzling ocean view spa tub. The walls are done in Venetian plaster burnished to a gorgeous glossiness that has to be seen to be believed. “People that come here are seeing the cutting edge products for the home and then they see it used in really creative ways,” said Young.

A favorite room of the architect’s is the outdoor sitting/dining relaxing space overlooking the pool. “You can sit there and watch the sunset over the harbor. Like a little pier or point outside of the house, then, walk outside of that little narrow gangplank and there’s a wonderful view back up into the mountains,” said Harrison.

Also contributing to the serene, peaceful feeling is the yoga/massage room adjacent to a ground floor wine cellar, dining area and screening/game room. “The yoga/massage room is kind of a Zen thing in California,” said Harrison, who has offices in both Atlanta and Santa Barbara. “But we’re seeing it all over the country. … People wanting to have the ability to sort of meditate and relax.”

Under designer Dixon’s touch, clever ideas, juxtapositions of old and new, eastern and western cultures and design inspiration abound. “A showhouse is like a fashion show,” said Young. And this is certainly one show you won’t want to miss.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on February 19, 2004.

Getting Creative With Cancer

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Something magical happens when you tune your mind to its creative side. This was the lesson learned when eight local cancer survivors ventured into The Aphrodite Project. Now the rest of us can tune into that wake-up call, thanks to Santa Barbara filmmakers Jennifer A. Reinish‘s and Justin Thomas Rowe’s documentary, The Aphrodite Project, which premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival last week.

The project was the brainchild of social worker Jo-Anne Blatter, who has worked with people with life-changing illnesses for 27 years. She named the endeavor after the Greek goddess Aphrodite because both were meant to inspire growth, passion and wholeness, by pairing people with cancer (“creators”) with professional artists to create collaborative pieces of artwork.

“A cancer diagnosis is not a death sentence; it’s an order … to live every moment,” said Aaron, one of the creators, who worked with Visual Artist Jill Katz to create a collage out of his medical records and photos of his surgery scarred body.

“Getting close to someone that has the potential of dying on you is pretty heavy,” said Katz. Indeed, watching the growth of the bond between Katz and Aaron, like that of the others, was the icing on an already irresistible cake.

“The focus was not on outcome or product, but rather on the process; on the experience of playing with art and music as a means to heal, and to uncover the mysterious messages that life-changing events tend to urge us to search for,” said Blatter. Not only did the creators bond with their artistic collaborators, they also bonded with one another, a journey documented by the film.

“There was an immediate feeling of camaraderie. We knew what the other people had gone through without having to talk about it,” said Randi, who created “before” and “after” masks with paper mache artist Ginny Valdez. “I felt like I was reconstructing my life by tearing up pieces of paper (to create the mask).”

The film travels from the group’s first meeting in January 2003 to the sharing of their art at a showing in June. “The gallery opening was a really nice finale,” said Ann, who created and recorded a song with help of musicians Dan Zimmerman, Jay Ferguson and Sharon “Muffy” Hendrix Roach.

“I’m in the midst of looking for a home for the project,” said Blatter, who did not have any outside funding. “We’re going to see what the universe brings.”

For more information visit www.theaphroditeproject.com or call Blatter at 682.7313.

The Aphrodite Project will air on channel 17 tonight at 5 p.m., Saturday at 11 a.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. For additional show times visit www.sbchannels.tv.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on February 12, 2004.