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Our 167th Year
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Holy guacamole!
Direct Relief continues to help Florida
After a two-year absence, the full-fledged, in-person California Avocado Festival is back in Carpinteria
Nonprofit also sends aid to South Carolina as Hurricane Ian heads north By DAVE MASON NEWS-PRESS MANAGING EDITOR
More FedEx trucks came Thursday to Direct Relief in Goleta to pick up urgent medical
aid for Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ian. The nonprofit has sent 14 shipments this week to Florida, Tony Morain, Direct Relief’s vice Please see HURRICANE on A5
BREA BURKHOLZ / DIRECT RELIEF
Shipments of medical aid depart Wednesday for multiple health facilities across Florida from Direct Relief in Goleta.
KENNETH SONG / NEWS-PRESS FILE PHOTOS
Linden Avenue was crowded in 2018 during the California Avocado Festival in Carpinteria. The 2022 festival will take place this weekend.
By NEIL HARTSTEIN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
The 36th annual California Avocado Festival kicks off this weekend in Carpinteria for two days of celebrating the green fruit responsible for all that delicious guacamole. After a two-year absence due to COVID, the in-person avocado festival returns Saturday and Sunday to Linden Avenue in the heart of downtown Carpinteria with plenty of entertainment and avocado-based creations for everyone to enjoy. (The festival was strictly a virtual celebration in 2020 and 2021.) Festival organizers are billing it as “our 36th year of peace, love and guacamole!” as well as one of the largest free music festivals in California, with more than 75 acts on three stages. While the festival is officially billed as taking place on Oct. 1 and 2, musicians will perform three days — beginning at 1 p.m. today and 10 a.m. on both Saturday and Sunday. Festival organizers are urging attendees to come celebrate the importance of the avocado to the Carpinteria Valley by visiting the Expo Tent. The tent is home to avocado agricultural photos, historical photos, lessons in avocado grafting, FFA-restored antique tractors and the Largest Avocado Contest. “Our food venue will have
FYI The 36th annual California Avocado Festival takes place this weekend in Carpinteria. For more information, go to avofest.com.
By KIM JARRETT THE CENTER SQUARE
A pair of oversized avocados are handled by curious visitors at the 2018 avocado festival. By the way, avocados are a fruit, not a vegetable.
plenty of avocado dishes so come hungry and enjoy some avocado creations!” organizers said. The 33rd annual California Avocado Festival, the last one held in-person before the pandemic, “was so successful that it surpassed many of our previous accomplishments!” organizers said on their website (avofest.com). “In prior years, we have had over 75,000 visitors over the course of the three-day weekend. This year, it was over 80,000!!!” And the 2019 festival’s participating nonprofits and service organizations were able to generate more than $100,000 worth of funds that went back to the community through their
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initiatives. The festival’s Merchandise Committee is working hard on bringing new items to the 2022 California Avocado Festival, and organizers are urging festivalgoers to stop by the newly named Annette Fisher Retail Booth to get their 2022 Avofest gear. The winner of the 36th Annual California Avocado Festival’s design contest was Carpinteria local Ashley DeVan. Ms. DeVan has been attending Avofest for almost 20 years and has entered the design contest three times previously with other designs. She said she drew her inspiration from this year’s “Back to the Roots” theme and the
event’s musical stages. “All the good things she loves about the festival are represented,” organizers said. The official unveiling took place on Sept.15 during the Farmers Market. Also on tap this year is the contest for best Avofest Guacamole. News-Press Co-Publisher Arthur Von Wiesenberger and Rebecca Brand are co-hosts, and there are a dozen judges. The idea of the California Avocado Festival began in 1986 at a meeting that included community leaders Rob Godfrey, Please see FESTIVAL on A5
(The Center Square) – Six states are suing the Biden administration over its plans to cancel millions of dollars in student loans. President Joe Biden announced his plan last month to cancel $10,000 in student loans for those who meet certain income requirements and $20,000 for students who received Pell Grants who met the same requirements. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina. It accuses the Biden administration of violating federal law including “the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act when he skirted congressional authority to implement this policy.’ “No statute permits President Biden to unilaterally relieve millions of individuals from their obligation to pay loans they voluntarily assumed,” the lawsuit said. “Just months ago, the Supreme Court warned federal agencies against ‘asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted’ by statute. Yet the Administration’s Mass Debt Cancellation does precisely that.” President Biden’s claims that student loan borrowers were adversely affected by the
pandemic are disingenuous because student loan payments were suspended, the attorneys general said in the lawsuit. “Since most borrowers during the pandemic missed no payments (because none were due), and most borrowers during the pandemic accrued no interest (because the interest rate has been 0%), and credit reporting bureaus during the pandemic have been reporting student loans as being on time and the underlying loans as being current (acting to increase an individual’s credit score), there is no pandemiccaused harm in relation to most borrowers’ student loans,” the attorneys general said. “In fact, 80% of all student loan borrowers saw their credit scores increase during the pandemic, with the largest increases among borrowers with delinquent loans at the beginning of the pandemic.” The attorneys general are asking the court to cancel the student loan forgiveness plan on the grounds it violates the separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution and the Administration Procedure Act. “President Biden’s unlawful political play puts the selfwrought college-loan debt on the backs of millions of hardworking Americans who are struggling to pay their utility bills and home loans in the midst of Biden’s inflation,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said in a statement. “President Biden does not have the power to arbitrarily erase the college debt of adults who chose to take out those loans.”
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