Posted inSpecial Issues

Weddings Issue 2025

This year’s annual issue highlights the latest trends and revamped traditions in flowers, videography, and gowns

This year’s Weddings Issue celebrates the couples who say ā€œI doā€ to current trends and their own sense of style as they prepare to say ā€œI doā€ to each other. Staff Writer Emma Montalbano gathers insights on floral styles, including organic designs and ā€œgrounded meadowsā€ [6]; New Times Staff Writer Libbey Hanson, from our sister […]

Posted inOpinion

Until Palestine is free

Since Oct. 7, 2023, all of us have experienced continuing, intense grief. Many of us are mourning cousins, siblings, classmates, parents … all of us are grieving the astounding loss of Palestinian lives as well as the very structure of Gazan life. There is nothing left of Gaza, yet its people rush back—on foot—to sift […]

Posted inOpinion

Local leaders must protect our immigrants

In one of Donald Trump’s first acts in office, he stripped away protections for schools, hospitals, and places of worship from immigration enforcement. These were once safe spaces where people could learn, receive health care, and pray without fear. Now they have been turned into targets for ICE raids. This is unconscionable. As the world’s […]

Posted inNews

Political Watch: February 20, 2025

• U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) helped introduce legislation that would restore guardrails on federal enforcement activities to protect immigrant communities at sensitive locations, according to a press release from his office. Since 2011, the Department of Homeland Security’s sensitive locations policy prohibited immigration enforcement actions in places that provided vital services such as […]

Posted inNews

Political Watch: February 13, 2025

• U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) is spending a lot of time pushing back on the Trump administration’s policy pushes. Since President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January and began signing a flurry of executive orders, Carbajal’s office has put out several press releases about what the congressman is doing and saying about it, […]

Posted inSpecial Issues

Health & Wellness 2025

In our annual issue, we talk ketamine-assisted and rapid-eye movement therapies and float pods

For this year’s issue of Health and Wellness, our writers delve into a deep state of relaxation, which can help set the stage for healing from trauma, anxiety, and more. That relaxation, called the theta state, can be achieved in a psychotherapist’s office or in a specialized pool of water and Epsom salt. Staff Writer […]

Posted inNews

Political Watch: February 6, 2025

• On Jan. 29, one day after President Donald Trump moved to freeze funding for a range of federal programs, the president’s budget office rescinded the order, according to the Associated Press (AP). Trump’s move had prompted ā€œwidespread confusion and legal challenges across the country,ā€ AP News reported. Locally, Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) issued […]

Posted inOpinion

All people deserve dignity

In response to ā€œEncampments return to Santa Maria Riverbedā€ (Jan. 30): I understand that Japan removes homeless people from the street, provides a livable detention area with basic needs. Basically, they are incarcerated. They are cleaned up (from addiction) and given an opportunity to improve their ability to thrive and return back into society. If […]

Posted inOpinion

Safer wind farms for all

Whether you are for or against wind farms off our coast, or on land for that matter, we all want them safer for the planet. With the idea of minimizing bird mortality, I have a couple of suggestions. To minimize deaths during the day, the blades as well as their support structure could be painted […]

Posted inNews

Political Watch: January 30, 2025

• U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) responded to the executive actions that President Donald Trump made on his first day in office by calling some of them illegal and unconstitutional. This includes orders to pause funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as the Bipartisan […]

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