Every Thursday at 2 p.m. until August 10, the S.B. Museum of Art is hosting ensembles from the Music Academy of the West for 45-minute performances. The recitals range from Renaissance to contemporary music, and they’re all free. It happens weekly in the Mary Craig Auditorium.
Water lilies are among the oldest flowering plants. Fossil leaves and pollen that can be attributed to this group have been found in deposits from the early Cretaceous Period, 100 to 125 million years before the present. A recent find is a flower quite similar to a modern water lily in the genus Victoria (the giant Amazon water lily) that was deposited around 90 million years ago. There is even a leaf remarkably similar to another contemporary genus that appears to have been stuck to the foot of a dinosaur walking the earth 221 million years ago. Recent DNA studies have placed the water lilies among the oldest living flowering plants.
Choices, changes: they’re facts of life, but dealing with them often sends even the most level-headed of ladies into a tailspin. Learning how to anticipate, prepare for, and deal with the choices and changes that come up in life is the goal behind Girls Inc’s Life Skills program, which was initially conceived 20 years ago. The six-week program was originally created to help young women dispel the “Cinderella myth,” says Joan Bowman, Advocacy Press publisher, a nonprofit division of Girls Inc. of Greater Santa Barbara. That myth, drilled into girls’ heads from childhood, is perpetuated by fairy tales featuring princes who come to the rescue of damsels in distress, sweeping them off their feet and into the abyss known as “happily ever after.” This creates a counterproductive mindset Bowman refers to as “magical thinking,” which is the opposite of the critical thinking skills necessary to help a woman navigate the waters of her own, real life.
At the Lobero Theatre, Tuesday, July 4.
This American concert began, naturally enough, with Wolfgang Mozart (Piano Quartet in G Minor, K. 478) and Darius Milhaud (Quatre Visages for Viola and Piano, Opus 238). Although the Constitution had been around for four years when Mozart died, he never made it to our shores, but his great librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, ended his days in New York, teaching Italian at Columbia. The unmistakably French Milhaud spent much of his life on this side of the Atlantic-first, during World War II, in the French Embassy in Brazil, and then as a professor at Mills College in Oakland, as well as serving as honorary music director of the Music Academy from 1948 to 1951.
I Am Woman Quiz
The view from in front of SBCC’s West Campus Garvin Theatre is staggering. A bright curve of green lawn drops away to the uninhibited expanse of our beautiful harbor, the blue-green ocean marked only by tiny white masts, while an equally picturesque backdrop of mountains surrounds this glittering beachfront. Nothing says endless summer like this scenic overlook, especially since it is populated almost exclusively by students in shorts and flip-flops. Santa Barbara in July-what better place or time to enjoy some Christmas cheer?
Last winter, Santa Barbara became the world center of Moog-the analog synthesizer invented by Bob Moog that many consider the genesis of synth and electronica-when Nick Montoya and Steve Fortner hosted an evening at Velvet Jones for the planet’s top enthusiasts. Next Wednesday, July 19, relive the feeling at Elsie’s on De la Guerra Street, when the Volt Per Octaves-Montoya’s collaboration with his wife Anna-returns to town. Here are five reasons to Moog out.
On June 15, George W. Bush-the president with the worst environmental record in the last 50 years-created by executive order the largest marine preserve in the world. The new Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument covers 140,000 square miles of ocean stretching from Kauai to Midway and encompassing a pristine array of atolls, sea mounts, and small islands, in an area larger than all of America’s national parks combined. Jean-Michel Cousteau, who spends about a third of his time in Santa Barbara, was the mastermind behind Bush’s shocking display of environmental concern.
At the Lobero Theatre, Thursday, July 6.
The deepest roots of all jazz, from the most accessible to the most extreme, were onstage at the Lobero Theatre last Thursday evening in the person of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. From the first bar of “Bourbon Street Parade” to the last poignant strains of “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” more than two hours later, it was a rollicking evening of expertly played and deeply felt New Orleans jazz.
For once, it’s imperative that Santa Barbara drivers pay attention to their surroundings while multitasking in the car. That’s because it is simply impossible to both talk on the cell phone while driving and look up at the artist-designed flags that line State Street this week. So put down those phones-maybe even park that car-because those flags, designed by artist Amy Gartrell, are definitely worth a long stare.
