Frank Van Schaick, aka Ol’ Van 1911-2006
It’s an impossible task to capture the essence of Frank Van Schaick on a few sheets of paper; he was too many things and so influential to countless people, especially the generations of children he taught.
Year: 2006
Imperfect Defense
Judge Ochoa Rules Againse Malinda Jones’s ‘Defense of Others’ Argument
CAMPUS COLLISION:
The Santa Barbara School Board will discuss a proposal next month to merge a successful alternative elementary school and an average performance middle school.
Sweets Shop
Snugly tucked between Longs Drugs and Cafe Siena, just above Figueroa on State Street, is a sweet little candy shop called Sweet Alley. After moving from Washington, D.C. four years ago, husband-and-wife candy store fiends Geoff Friedman and Ali Oshinsky joked about the fact that there was no candy shop on State Street. Two years later, they were the proud owners of their very own sweets store.
The Lord Hath No Mercy
On September 1, 2002, Jasper Akii was trying to sleep in his family’s grass-thatched hut, located on the dusty, war-torn plains of Northern Uganda. For as long as the 11-year-old boy could remember, his small village of cassava farmers and cattle herders had struggled with the daily disruptions of a 20-year civil war between Ugandan government forces and a rag-tag band of dreadlocked, machine gun-toting rebels known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. But only during late summer of that year had the outfit – led by its charismatic, bloodthirsty “prophet” Joseph Kony – begun to terrorize the villages scattered throughout the Lira District, where Jasper lived.
SICK ON THE INSIDE:
Despite the ACLU’s request that an inmate representative or liaison take part in choosing the contractor for medical services at the county jail, the Board of Supervisors approved a $10 million contract with Prison Health Services (PHS), a private, for-profit company that has been providing healthcare for inmates and probationers since 1995.
Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris Duet
Picture a musical duet. Who’ve you conjured? Rogers/Easton? Streisand/Gibb? Cher/Bono? Travolta/Newton? Ross/Richie? It’s not a pretty picture, is it? Simply put, the duet doesn’t have much artistic currency, at least in pop and rock, where it’s usually used to generate sticky-sweet songs that guarantee gluttonous record sales.
Well here is an album, and a show (tonight!) at the S.B. Bowl, that spits in the faces of both Duet-as-Star-Vehicle and Duet-as-Soul-Enhancer. Somehow, the guy responsible for one of the catchiest rock songs ever, “Money for Nothing,” and the woman who has graced more country and roots albums than anyone, have put together a collection of songs that sound like the work of a cohesive, long-standing band. And while All the Roadrunning won’t catapult Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris to any platinum stardom, this album will long be a standard of how to make a duet album work.
Pick It Up
Violins’ Pink Water: Did you dig the alternately melodic/punk stylings of the Chicago outfit Clyde Federal when they rocked The Hard to Find last year? Now see what lead singer Michael Lyons is up to in this solo debut, a lyrically biting, sour-sweet romp.
Numbers Game
Numbers Game: County Budget Released
by Martha Sadler
This year’s budget process was relatively comfortable, but it was not completely bloodless. For one thing, insured seniors living in group homes will have to do without the preventative counseling to which they have become accustomed, as health officials decided that other needs were more pressing. More dramatically, heads rolled as the Economic Development Program (EDP) was axed. The program is an arm of the three-year-old Housing and Community Development Department – recently stained by allegations of client fraud, even though the allegations stretch back beyond its current administration. Some suspect that the economic program’s dismantlement is merely the beginning of the end of the HCD. Some of EDP’s functions will be absorbed by the executive office – further proof that all roads lead to the centralization of power under county Chief Executive Officer Michael Brown.
CAF CHANGES:
The Contemporary Arts Forum announced last week that Ian D. Smith – an attorney, former cook, letterpress studio operator, and producer of avant-guitar noise albums with the band Halo – was named the president of the nonprofit’s Board of Trustees. Other new trustees include Candice Assassi, Carolyn Glasoe, and Glenn Miller. Kendra Epley remains CAF’s treasurer.
