Take a Cool Guess—The Fun Quiz on Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability. Today’s Topic: Santa Barbara’s Summer Solstice Parade
Question: Santa Barbara is not the only city in the world know for its quirky parades, but its Summer Solstice Parade may be the most whimsical on Earth. Over 2000 locals participate in 60 – 70 different floats/acts, one of which, this year was a group of middle/older-aged women dressed as which Supreme Court Justice?
Answer: Can be found at Clean Energy Answers.
Relevance: Santa Barbara, a bastion of well-educated liberalism, generally doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it carries an abiding respect and admiration for this particular justice and her values.
Craig,
It looks like a lot of fun !
Being a resident of Santa Barbara explains a lot about you, and your attitudes.
Santa Barbara have a long history of detesting the oil industry having negative experiences in the early days of oil exploration and offshore drilling.
No one likes to live next to an oil refinery, especially in a beach resort town ! (Oil should just mysteriously arrive at the service station as gasoline). Still it’s understandable given the history of mismanagement of the oil field, the good folks of Santa Barbara must be forgiven for wishing the industry would go away altogether.
Santa Barbara, like many Californian coastal towns, has been fortunate in it’s ethic mix and recent employers. Having a large percentage of the population employed in educational institutions, government services, or the aerospace/defense industry must help keep the poverty rate to below 13%.
No city hosting a “The Reagan Ranch Center” as tribute to the 40th President, and also the birthplace of the Bruce Brown classic film, The Endless Summer, (great movie !) must be worthy of a visit 🙂
Santa Barbara is truly one of the best examples of the US at it’s most aspirational.
But even paradise comes at a cost. For decades Santa Barbara kept out the poor and working class buy a policy of refusing water to the development of outlying low cost dormitory suburbs. For many years the population was capped at 85,000.
Santa Barbara need not have worried. The entire area is a showcase of the ‘new economy’. This is the America of migrant dreams, where the promise of an affluent, liberal, optimistic American lifestyle is on display.
Sadly, (or fortunately,depending on where you live) Santa Barbara is not typical of the USA.
Highland Park in Detroit stands as a sad contrast, along with Rancho Dominguez, West Mount, Florence, or Watts in California. Across the USA there are literally thousands of forgotten communities of American’s existing in shabby decay or abject poverty.
Of course, that isn’t the fault of the affluent residents of Santa Barbara who are quite right to celebrate their good fortune while trying to keep alive the best aspirations of the American dream.
But, spare a thought for those less fortunate among your fellow Americans. Those left out of the American dream. Those who feel embittered,betrayed and neglected. Called ‘deplorable’ and despised by the political pygmies who now squabble and despoil the legacy of former giants like the late Robert F. Kennedy.
43.4 million Americans live below the official poverty line, while maybe over 100 million are one paycheck away from poverty.
In the words of Bruce Springsteen ;
Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War Two
Now the yard’s just scrap and rubble
He said “Free Trade did what Hitler couldn’t do.”
These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country’s wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we’re wondering what they were dyin’ for
Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny I’m sinkin’ down
Here darlin’ in Youngstown
From the Monongahela valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story’s always the same
Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world’s changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name
So maybe instead of being absorbed with the plight of illegal migrants, you might spare a thought for fellow Americans who lack your good fortune and have nothing to celebrate.
Hey, but enough of that ! I hope you have a great time and I can’t wait to include the 2019 Old Spanish Days Fiesta into my itinerary when I next visit California, (remembering to get reserved seating).
I also want to visit the wine country near Santa Barbara, which hotel would you recommend ?
(I may have a traveling companion so I prefer historic hotels with a suite). My son recommended the Fess Parker Inn, but I’m informed there’s a Four Seasons and I believe a place called Kimpton Canary Hotel.
Doe’s Joe’s still exist ? And is the Good Lion really worth visiting ?
Spare a thought during your summer solace for me as I spent the weekend on the farm and I arose this morning to a winter frost of 5 degrees Celsius and pouring rain to move stock on horseback. (Two farm hands are down with influenza). But the snow on the mountains is beautiful, and as long as each day brings new adventure, I consider myself blessed.