Wendy and Craig McCaw are going to be fixtures in Santa Barbara for a long time, and they've called out the dogs of war. Between them, they must own over 100 million dollars in real estate, so I've decide to do a little investigative reporting.
They are divorced but share common interests and visions for California. Their visions are not all earthly, either. Certainly, I am gaining some perspective about this dynamic duo.
Wendy loves whales because Craig loves whales, or visa versa? Either way, their foundation spent over 3 million dollars to "save" a much-abused-by-humans whale named Keiko, who "starred" in the "Free Willy" movies. Keiko could not adapt to the wild due to his domestication by humans and eventually died from all the attention and handling.. with friends like these....
Says Craig McCaw: "The orcas swim in space that we don't very well understand and of course in outer space we will face some day the moral dilemma of how to deal with aliens who land on earth, perhaps, if in fact what
people believe is true- and we will have the same moral dilemma in
exchanging people or creatures back and forth with them for
understanding.
What is right and to what degree should it be voluntary or not
voluntary or for the good of society, theirs or ours? So we're on
the cusp of some very difficult issues that we frankly aren't going
to escape very easily. But it's quite clear to us that these are
extremely intelligent creatures. That dolphins and killer whales are
very much like us only with fins and there is a certain amount of
mutual understanding that comes from this exchange".
Yeah, Craig..I'm concerned about spacemen, too!
Craig brought his dough from Seattle to Santa Barbara and snatched up property on Park Lane in Montecito and 60 acres of beachfront sand by the Bacara in Goleta. The first thing people with inordinate amounts of money do is cut down ALL the trees on their new property. I've seen it time and time again! I don't understand it, but there it is. McCaw is no different, having chopped more than 200 eucalyptus trees at his new digs. I guess he doesn't like butterflies! Wendy, of course, beat him to SB and bought the News-Press, a big spread in Hope Ranch and numerous other holdings. Then she hooked up with the Montecito social set and found companionship with Arthur Von Weisenberger, AKA Nipper, who appears to know a lot about nothing!
Together, they have blazed a publishing trail with a scorched earth policy.
Craig McCaw now shares the Santa Barbara spotlight with Wendy, and the headlines will be filled with their antics. Pearl Chase and Charles Stearns must be turning in their graves....