Serving OB, the Peninsula and San Diego Beaches
We have been sharing resources with our sister site, the San Diego Free Press and it’s time for us each to have our own place, our own space, so we can both continue to grow.
There may be a period of time when our site appears to be down. Rest assured it will be temporary but could last anywhere from a few hours to a full day. Word needs to spread across the globe about what our new address is.
By Naomi Wolf / Guardian UK / December 29 , 2012
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy:
totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police.
The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves -was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
Residents and denizens of Ocean Beach want more street lights and safer streets – in terms of infrastructure improvements for the community.
The OB Rag ran a weekly poll from December 17th to the 25th and asked readers the following, with an invitation to add their own response, which some did:
Three out of four respondents answered that they want safer and paved streets, and more street lights. 64% replied that they want to see “more lights, safer streets”, and 11% answered that they want the City to “Re-pave streets & add more street lights. It’s too dark and unsafe at night”. This is a total of 75%.
Unlike some other communities, Ocean Beach apparently doesn’t have any problems with wireless phone companies installing their cell sites on the Masonic Temple … as well as on local churches around the neighborhood.
The issue of the cell towers or antennae on the Mason’s building went before the Project Review Committee earlier this month on December 19th, and it was basically a non-issue, it seems, not controversial at all – as the Review Committee’s chair, Landry Watson, told the OB Rag. The sub-committee did recommended approval for the permit renewal.
By Michael Stepner / SDMetro
The end of November marked the beginning of construction of a new public plaza in Downtown San Diego. On Nov. 29, demolition of the Robinsons–May department store began. The building, only 27 years old, is to be replaced by a 1.3-acre addition to our historic Horton Plaza.
This and other recent examples point to our recent re-understanding of parks, plazas and open spaces as critical components of our urban environment. The San Diego Union editorialized: “Park improvement is among the most important undertakings now before the city. It should have the cordial co-operation of all.”
A house fire on the 2300 block of Seaside Street in northeast Ocean Beach has claimed the lives of at least a dozen pet birds.
Early Thursday, Dec. 27, around 3:30 a.m. a fire broke out in the living-room of the residence near Larkspur Street. When firefighters arrived, they found the 46 year old resident suffering from smoke inhalation; she was taken to a hospital for further evaluation.
The owner of an antique store in Ocean Beach has her nephew’s photo propped up in her consignment shop on Newport Avenue. The picture has her nephew, Quinn Rogan – wounded in Afghanistan when he blocked suicide bombers from attacking his base – along with the President – who made him a surprise visit recently at Walter Reed Army hospital.
by Kristen Gwynne / AlterNet
Last week, the Seattle Police Department quietly released the hilarious how-to, Marijwhatnow? A Guide to Legal Marijuana Use In Seattle. Witty and silly, it covers all the bases, from driving stoned to drug tests for jobs and whether police themselves can get high. It begins:
It is Christmas, 2012, and I sit in the sunlight of the early morning and welcome the day. For many years I have been alone on Christmas morning; my children, parents, sister and I celebrate Christmas on its eve. My children spend the day with her mother and later in the day, my parents, sister and I have dinner at my cousin’s home. As a result, the gift I receive Christmas morning is time. Time to sit and reflect, time to meditate, time to just be.
As a Catholic Christian of the Franciscan brand, and a student of Buddhism and the Tao, I spend much of my time thinking about the concept of compassion; what it means and how to let flow from me and perhaps by example, to others. I know in my imperfection, I fall short on many occasions, but I try.
Editor: The following post was originally published as a Letter on December 22nd. We thought it was so poignant, that we decided to post it as an article and “Reader Rant”.
My name is Mic D. I was homeless in OB from about 1989 to 1991. I “lived” near dog beach at a fire pit for about a year, and then in a dugout in Robb Field for another year. It was a most difficult time of life for me.
Being a widow is difficult if the relationship between the two spouses was a good one. There are times that being a widow is harder than other times. Like now. The Holidays. Being a widow and having 12 grandchildren becomes quite expensive and for the first time in many years I am unable to gift my children as well as their children.
In William Carlos Williams’s famous poem “Burning the Christmas Greens” he notes how at “the thick of the dark moment” in “winter’s midnight” we turn to the trees because “green is a solace” that we use to “fill our need.” Thus the “living green” along with “paper Christmas bells covered with tinfoil and fastened by red ribbons” seem “gentle and good to us.” But then when their time is past we feel the relief as we clear our rooms and assign the greens to the fireplace and “in the jagged flames green to red, instant and alive.” And we stand “breathless to be witnesses as if we stood ourselves refreshed among the shining fauna of that fire.”
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