ON THE RECORD (Continued from page 15)
come in,” she said. Thanks to the loosening of social-distancing measures that coincided with the Memorial Day Holiday, many patients are presenting themselves with serious flu-like symptoms, some of which are COVIDrelated and some of which are just good, old-fashioned cold viruses. “The last week or two have seen an especially big increase for us,” Malone said. “We aren’t just seeing the flu but a host of other viruses as well. And now we are seeing much younger age groups coming in with symptoms who are pretty sick. We want people to know that there are a lot of procedures in place and they shouldn’t be afraid to come to the hospital for treatment.”
An Homage of Fallen Trees
One of them sits in front of the Montecito Public Library. Another can be found on the grounds of the Knowlwood Tennis Club. Two are located next to the Boy Scout building in Upper Manning Park. Several are scattered along different trails in Montecito’s Ennisbrook and Casa Dorinda open spaces, and all of them are made from trees that were salvaged from the debris flows that devastated Montecito on January 9, 2018. An ongoing project of public art and remembrance by local craftsman David Moseley, they are memorial benches made in memory of victims of the disaster. A longtime Montecito resident who grew up near Romero Canyon and attended Montecito Union School, he isn’t necessarily comfortable with publicity and so tends to limit his words. “I’ve been milling lumber for about twenty years,” he said simply. Among Moseley’s creations: the wood tables and bars at Casa Blanca restaurant on State Street and a fourinch-thick 20-foot wooden table at the Montecito Club. Moseley first got the idea for making memorial benches during a conversation about a year ago with the Bucket Brigade’s Abe Powell. “I’ve known Abe for many decades, and am good friends with his family,” Moseley said. “We’ve known each other since kindergarten. Abe mentioned the idea to me and I started playing around with some different designs and it went from there.” According to Powell, the idea first arose when he and other Bucket Brigade members were digging through the mud and debris that inundated Montecito in the days after the tragedy. “There were all these trees that came down and the creeks were full of them. They were beautiful and people were talking about how we should use them for some kind of memorial,” he continued. “We thought maybe we could pull them out of there and make them into some 2 – 9 July 2020
Keith and Savina Hamm (photo courtesy Abe Powell)
John McManigal, Jr. and David Moseley on the memorial bench for John Mcmanigal, Sr. at Knowlwood Tennis Club (photo courtesy Abe Powell)
nice benches.” With that consensus, Powell immediately thought of Moseley and his craftmanship. “David is the son of a carpenter who was the son of a cabinet maker,” Powell said. “He grew up steeped in woodwork and at some point realized that with the wind blowing over these old trees or them having to be cut down, they were going to be hauled away. Instead, he figured he could make them into something beautiful.” So far, Moseley has made eight benches for victims of the debris flow, each one bearing a memorial plaque. The pair outside the Boy Scout building are for Dave and Jack Cantin, in honor of their service to Montecito’s legendary Troop 33. The bench in front of the library is dedicated to Joseph Bleckel, while the Knowlwood bench is named for John McManigal. On the bank of the San Ysidro Creek inside Ennisbrook Open Space, you’ll find a bench for Rebecca Riskin, and if you hike the Peter Bakewell trail, you’ll discover benches for both Morgan and Sawyer Corey as well as James and Alice Mitchell. Moseley agreed to craft each bench only after the Bucket Brigade contacted each family about the project and received their permission to include their lost loved one. “The Bucket Brigade founders thought it would be nice if there were beautiful benches throughout the community to help remember the friends and neighbors we lost on 1/9,” Powell said. “We hope to build benches for everyone, but it is up to the survivors. It’s still hard for people. We’ve talked to some folks and they say they’ll think about it, and a year goes by, and they still don’t know.”
No Mas Agua!
Apologies for the misleading headline, but it’s worth celebrating that the Montecito Journal’s six-part series on our town’s complex water politics is finally complete! On June 25, Montecito’s Water Board made history by voting unanimously to approve a deal with Santa Barbara that will guarantee us a local and reliable source of water for the next half century. In approving its Water Supply Agreement (WSA) with the city, the Montecito Water District (MWD) has agreed to help pay for the cost of the city’s pricey 1980s-era desalination plant, which originally operated for just four months before
• The Voice of the Village •
being hastily decommissioned for decades and only brought back online in 2015 during California’s most recent many years-long drought. MWD’s vote took place after a threehour online public hearing during which a cast of characters who are familiar to anyone who’s read the Journal’s coverage – including former board members as well as local water conservation advocates and environmentalists – made arguments both for and against the deal that featured prominently in the Journal’s previous coverage of this story. But according to Nick Turner, MWD’s general manager, only 15 formal protests were lodged against the agency’s plan. Given that MWD services well more than 4,000 household accounts, that didn’t come anywhere close to the 50 percent-plus-one-ratepayer benchmark needed to veto the Water Board’s vote. Along with approving the desal deal, MWD’s board of directors also approved a rate hike that will help pay for the water, but which the agency insists will only impact Montecito’s biggest water consumers while actually lowering the monthly bills for about half of the town’s residents. Despite the historic vote, however, arguments about the desal deal are likely to continue in the coming months and years. And given that water is the key to just about every major environmental story that affects Montecito and the rest of southern Santa Barbara County – from fire to rain to drought to cannabis (acres and acres and even more acres of cannabis) – it’s fair to say we aren’t done writing about water just yet. In fact, both Bob Hazard, MJ’s associate editor, and Carolee Krieger, California Water Impact Network’s president and executive director, already have something to say about it in this week’s issue, and we expect more editorials to come. Stay tuned! •MJ
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