Category: Columns

Sex, politics, fashion and everything else a Gen-X everygal loves to dish about.

Screw Hope. Trust Tenacity.

Published on December 3, 2020

How Hannah-Beth Jackson Beat the Drum for Women’s Rights

It was 11:56 p.m. on her final day of her final term in office — and things didn’t look good. “I had ’til midnight to get this bill passed, and I’d been working on it for years,” State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson says of her Paid Family Leave Act, aimed at protecting the jobs of folks who take leave to care for family. It had passed the Senate but needed 41 votes to clear the Assembly.

Fresh from a C-section, Rep. Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley) showed up with her newborn to cast the 40th vote in favor. “We were running out of time,” Jackson recalls, “and I thought, We’re not gonna get there.”

And then (get this!) moderate Democrat Joaquin Arambula, who reps conservative Fresno and had publicly spoken out against the bill, voted in favor — tipping the ayes to 41.

A casual observer might call it luck. But anyone who’s followed Sen. Jackson’s career — her stint in the State Assembly from 1998 to 2004, and her two terms in the Senate, which officially ended Nov. 30 — knows it’s the result of the senator’s political mantra:

“Never ever, ever, ever, ever give up.”

Why Are So Many Folks Hankering for a Pandemic Pup?

Published on October 5, 2020

Santa Barbara Columnist Takes This Quaran-tunity to Adopt a Furry Friend

Looking back, it may not have been the best idea to get a puppy right after replanting our entire backyard. In the course of managing COVIDoldrums, they both just seemed like smart, unrelated projects to occupy our time.

Even as I type this, though, there’s a muddy-muzzled, filthy-pawed, remorseless little furball on the pale rug beside me gnawing maniacally on one of the five plants she uprooted today and lugged into my office, dirt clods and all.

It’s not like we needed a puppy. We have a perfectly good adult dog already, and our life was pleasantly predictable. We could sleep through the night. We could open our front door without fear of any residents escaping. Our hands were not covered in lacerations from tiny, “YOW!”-inducing needle teeth.

But when it became clear that life outside of our wearisome walls would not be resuming anytime soon, we joined thousands across the nation and took this quaran-tunity to adopt a furry friend.

Enlisting the Break-Up Pros

Published on September 1, 2020

Could Japan’s Wakaresaseya Woo Away Our Ball-and-Chain POTUS?

Dear Wakaresaseya Agency,

We were recently perusing the news when among the usual fare of planetary plagues, unsurvivable hurricanes, and right-wing Christian three-ways, we read about your surreptitious services. We don’t mind confessing we’re entirely intrigued.

Can it be true there are businesses in Japan dedicated solely to breaking up relationships? And that people hire these covert agents to bust up their own marriages by luring their spouses into affairs??

It’s hard to believe — but then again, if someone had told us six months ago that we’d be marching to save the US Freaking Postal Service and shoveling mountains of money at Ole Grampa Biden, we’d have laughed in their unmasked face, sputtering, “Shyeah, right, I’d sooner homeschool my kids!”

Zooming Away from Privacy

Published on July 8, 2020

Nonstop Video Conferencing Puts Our Once-Secret Sanctuaries on Display

It’s gutting the economy, ravaging health care, and battering education. But fewer are talking about the ways this pandemic may be impacting our culture, taking things from us — lovely things — that we might never get back. Rock concerts. Open-office floor plans. Fro-yo toppings bars.

You know what else is likely to be rendered obsolete in a post-COVID world? Curtains. Shutters. And blinds.

While our homes were once sacred spaces where we were free to let down our guards, the new dangers of the outside world have forced us to invite the outside — awkwardly and perhaps ill-advisedly — in. Now, between Zoom, FaceTime, Teams, BlueJeans, and Google Hangout, there are more ways to bring strangers into your home than there are good excuses to leave it.

The (COVID-) 19 Reasons to Support the ‘Santa Barbara Independent’

Published on May 12, 2020

Our Columnist’s Perfectly Proportioned List of Why to Support This Newspaper Now

1. During a global pandemic, the local news they’re providing literally affects your life. Their reporters are asking tough questions of public health leaders, pushing for answers from our elected officials and introducing us to local heroes who risk their own health to keep us safe.

2. A steep and sudden drop in ads from restaurants, bars, and event venues has put the Independent in serious financial jeopardy, the likes of which it has never seen before.

3. When news is done well, as the Indy does it, it feels like a public utility — like it’s our right as citizens to have access to the information reporters provide. But it’s not. It’s a business, one that requires income to pay its few tireless reporters. And we could easily become one of the growing number of towns without a legitimate local news source to keep us informed.

Mating in Captivity?

Published on April 29, 2020

Why the Wave of ‘Quarantine Babies’ Must Be a Myth

I’ve heard the prophecy. You’ve heard the prophecy. By now we’ve all heard it: Nine months from now, we’ll see a wave of “quarantine babies,” conceived while humans across the globe stayed indoors and *wink, wink* found ways of entertaining themselves.

But I don’t believe it for a minute.

Have you ever seen a porno featuring a couple in sweatpants and rubber gloves wiping down boxes of frozen waffles and Minute Rice with spray bleach after returning, face-masked and reeking of Purell, from a terrified jaunt to the market? The answer is no, my friends. No, you have not.

Because this moment we’re suffering through is not a sexy moment. In fact, this bizarre blip in history couldn’t be less of a turn-on if it were a glob of ketchup-flavored spittle dangling from Donald Trump’s twaddle-spewing flaptrap.

My Social Distancing Diary

Published on April 1, 2020

Starshine Reports from Weeks of Santa Barbara Isolation with Her Quaranteens

Day One

Inventoried all Lysol wipes on premises, trimmed nails short for maximum tidiness, and gathered as family to create daily germ-blasting household wipe-down regimen.

Gobbled up kale salad, popped an Airborne gummy, and added home workouts to my calendar four times/week. Health is a priority!

Pulled out old recipe books, dusted off a 1,000-piece puzzle, and upgraded video streaming services now that we finally have time to explore all those award-winning series.

Brought in logs for cozy fires, ordered cute desk lamp for work-at-home station, and dug out tub of pore-purifying facial mud mask from the bathroom cupboard. Bring on the staycation!

Reflecting on the Women’s Suffrage Centennial

Published on March 5, 2020

Susan B. Anthony’s Santa Barbara Sojourn Was Just One Stop on Rough Road to Get the Vote

In the month leading up to this week’s election, I spent an unhealthy amount of time debating with girlfriends on Facebook about political candidates. Some of these women denounced attack ads, others bristled at the mess of campaign financing, and still others upbraided me for insisting that Bloomberg is just another tantrum-prone manbaby. Sometimes our arguments got heated — and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is what we do — the informed, opinionated, engaged women of our town. Of our county and state. Of our nation. We think about issues and develop viewpoints around them: Race-based policing. Cannabis growth. The housing crisis.

In all of our weighty pondering, though, there’s one important thing that we rarely think about: the onerous work it took to earn us the right to vote exactly 100 years ago. Putting our opinions into action by means of the ballot is a privilege we take for granted now. It’s so assumed, so obviously just, and so second nature that it’s almost offensive to have to be grateful for it, isn’t it?

The Optimism of Anita Hill

Published on February 12, 2020

Law Professor Reflects on Her Past, Our Present, and Being a Symbol of Sexual Harassment

Before there was a Weinstein trial, before there was a Kavanaugh hearing, and before there were fed-up females shouting #MeToo in chilling harmony from rooftops ’round the nation, there was Anita Hill. Stoic, young, and starkly alone, she sat in an unforgettable teal dress before a pride of powerful white men and revealed the sordid details of her boss’s sexual harassment.

It was 1991, and her story might not have gotten any attention at all — except that this particular boss was about to succeed Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court.

Hill, an honors graduate of Yale Law School and the youngest of 13 children born to Oklahoma farmers, testified that during the years she worked for Clarence Thomas — including, ironically, at the government agency responsible for adjudicating sexual harassment claims — he had repeatedly asked her out, described his anatomy and sexual prowess, made reference to pubic hair on his soda can, and talked about porn depicting bestiality, group sex, and rape scenes.

Is Porn the New Sex Ed?

Published on January 27, 2020

The Conversations You Need to Have With Your Kids. Right Now.

Arizona and Washington are debating this month whether to provide sex education in schools. Colorado’s deciding if parents can opt their kids out of the curriculum. And North Carolina parents are protesting their high schoolers’ sex ed, saying it “encourages promiscuity” and “destroys childhood innocence.”

What none of them seem to realize is this: Sex education is happening. It’s happening. The only question is whether you want it to be accurate, or you’re comfortable with your kids getting their titillating tutelage from Alexis Texas and Kendra Lust on pervclips.com.