Editorials, letters to the editor, and other community opinions about Santa Monica.
A few months ago, the federal government announced it was appropriating 17.5 billion dollars to build ten new nuclear power plants by 2030, created solely for the purpose of generating enough additional electricity to power the rapidly burgeoning, and troublingly…
Santa Monica Spoke submitted the following letter to support the awarding of a contract to design a protected bikeway on 14th Street at last night’s City Council meeting. The motion passed 7-0. Subject: Item 4B: Please support a Protected Bikeway…
Get Thee to a Nunnery In Act Three of Hamlet, the young prince says to Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery, go. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of…
The crossing guard at Chelsea Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard has been escorting McKinley kids across the street for almost twenty years, and for much of that time he’s had to watch out for left-turning drivers who didn’t see her…
A last-minute attempt to create a special exemption from California’s Coastal Act for a major Santa Monica development appears to be dead, after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration backed away from including the controversial provision in a state budget trailer bill.…
Before I begin, I want to honor and commemorate my incredible Sacramento Chief of Staff, Carol Wallisch, who passed away last Sunday. For fourteen years, she was the calm in every storm, the encouragement when others said “you can’t do…
What We Were Not Albert Camus was a political journalist, novelist (The Stranger and The Plague) and essayist known for his absurdist work. In 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I was thinking of a quote attributed to him this…
Note: The Supervisor’s Office mailed us a copy of Horvath’s notes yesterday that can be found below the video.
We appreciate Santa Monica Next’s coverage of SMMPTA Council’s legislative study on artificial turf and its decision to publish a link to the full report (“Coastal Commission Staff Fumes at ‘Unpermitted’ Turf Replacement at Ocean Park School House,” July 28).…
Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District prioritizes student safety and well-being, including a commitment to safe, accessible outdoor learning and play spaces. Physical Education is part of the curriculum and a central component to every student’s educational experience. While there are…
Historian and futurist, Nils Gilman, wrote a piece earlier this year in his substack, “Small Precautions”, positing that, although the words “secret police” tend to conjure up images of the Gestapo or the Stasi or the KGB, should we place…
In the late 70s, when I first became involved with the Sojourn Shelter for Battered Women and Their Children, the first thing co-founder Ariana Manov did was to take all of us volunteers through an in-depth training on the wide-spread…
In trying to write that portion of my life that intersected with our global experience of the pandemic, I couldn’t seem to get the phrase “she’s come all undone” out of my head. Everything we took for granted had begun…
The Land of Broken Toys In each of the continuing films of Pixar’s Toy Story franchise, we have been introduced, in several ways, to the fates of broken toys. In Toy Story 1, we meet the mutant toys, who have been broken and…
The following is a submission from Santa Monica Forward. Santa Monica Forward is proud to endorse Caroline Torosis, Eli Gill, and Brett Morrow for Santa Monica City Council in November 2026, three leaders with the record, urgency, and expertise to…
