What we said:
How about a visit to Santa Barbara?

What Monkey heard: visit Santa!

We tried and tried and tried to get his mind to let go of "Chistmas Xmascy." You know what worked? Reminding him Halloween comes first even if the stores are already full of Christmas decorations.

Opice was assigned a web-search. "Your mission is to trace the name Santa Barbara." (He loves missions: Mission Impossible, Mission Galactica, Mission to Mars...)

He also had to put his findings in the form of an essay (he hates writing) but his nephew Lukáš would help him. That's because we'd be staying with Luke at U.C. Santa Barbara.

"In the dorms!?" Monkey asks doing his I-want-to bounce up-and-down. "I'll be a dormer." [bounce bounce bounce]

Here's what he and his university student nephew did.

Lukáš: At university they teach us organization. First we need to know if it has to be a certain length?

Oipce: At least 250 words.

Lukáš: I hate that! You have to count and count and count the words to know when you're done.

Oipce: Yeah, me too. And it makes copying harder.

Lukáš: Exactly. Most webpages don't have enough words. Then you have to paste those and try to find more that fit.
. . . . . .

What about Santa Barbara and St. Barb?
in 250 words, not less
by Opice the Czech Plush Monkey, pHd

How was Santa Barbara named? That is the question. And why is it's mission tied-up with St. Barbara? That's the question, two. History can tell us. (26)

Santa Barbara was built in a wealthy part of Southern California back in the day. It got the 10th mission in the set of 21 in 1786. The log cabin got replaced for adobe in 1794. Then the earthquake destructed that one in 1812 and finally replaced by the present stone edifice (1815-33), with its classical façade and twin towers. (86)

Bam! The 1925 quake. By 1950 it was ready for the next one. (99)

Meanwhile the University of California for Santa Barbara was built in Isla Vista because Goleta couldn't afford it and who wants a bunch of college kids near your mission? The mission remembered the legend of St. Barbara who people believed in around the seventh century, "owing to the purely legendary character of the accounts." (152 only 100 to go!)

She had a fight with her father who wasn't Christian, so he took her to the police when she said she was. Sure enough she was guilty. Her father carried out the beheading, but in punishment for this he was struck by lightning on the way home and his body consumed. There must have been cannibalism. (209)

This made her the common people's patron saint in time of danger from thunder-storms and fire, and later by analogy, as the protector of artillerymen and miners. Which is funny because the weather in Santa Barbara is always nice. (250!)
____________
What Luke & Opice forgot to site:
A Companion to California by James D. Hart, Oxford U. Press 1978.

and source for saint info.

View to
Santa Barbara
Channel
named by
Sebastian Vizcaino
on the Saint's Day,
4 Dec. 1602.

Same day 184 years later the mission site was chosen.