Month: September 2013

By Stephanie L. Denton

Today we celebrate the Harvest Moon. Its time to prepare for the upcoming season change by gathering what we have grown through the Spring to Summer seasons. With her help Mother Moon sheds a little extra light onto this process. She tugs and pulls at our waters and ourselves, giving light to the shadows to better excavate by.

She shows us half of herself one night a month, the rest of the month we see her partially. Twelve times a year we get to see a solid half of her, the rest is a mystery. I find comfort in this as the mystery of the human personality persists, and I relate her phenomena to human character. What a beautiful thing to be revered when the light shines down and the scenery is illuminated.

By Kelsey Lynore / The Tarot Nook

Each week, Kelsey throws a “What to do?” spread for each of the zodiac signs. The first card is shown and the other two… well, you’ll just have to infer them from the written forecasts. Mind the heads up and have a lovely week!

Rams

Prepare for a banner week, Aries. But know this: Your dreams won’t come true if you isolate yourself in your own mental bubble and fantasize about how great your life could be if only. You need to move out into the world and make it happen! Is it scary? Of course! Will it get your blood pumping? I sure hope so! But where you might have tried and failed in the past, you now stand a very good chance of succeeding. So, strap on your hiking boots, pack only those things that you want to carry with you into the future, and then move towards that future. As soon as you do move, you really, really will. Yee-haw!

It’s happened. The final design for the new Ocean Beach Veterans’ Memorial Plaza has been publicly unveiled.

Over the last week and a half, presentations of the new design have been made in front of both the Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association and the OB Community Development Corporation (OBCDC) – the project’s sponsoring organization. And both groups gave green lights to the project that will replace the current memorial, one that has been worn down literally by salt air, sand, ocean water, foot traffic – not to mention marshmallows – .

Yet it may be years before the new memorial project itself is completely constructed.

The OB Veterans’ Plaza has also been in the news for months (for instance San Diego Newsroom ) because of a connection with the developer Sunroad and accusations of ‘pay to play’ monies given to the City, that former Mayor Filner wanted to go to the memorial. (It was mentioned in last weeks San Diego Reader cover story entitled “Did Sunroad pay to play?” )

Once built, the new plaza will have a final design that resulted from a process that involved two community workshops earlier this year and the creative input of the design consultant, and will be located next to the current reserved parking lot south of the main lifeguard station, butting up to Abbott Street. It will have a mosaic walkway from Abbott Street to a gathering plaza next to the sand, and includes four granite walls with the names of the honored vets. A crosswalk at Newport Avenue and Abbott Street is also being considered as part of the design.

By Melissa Phy / For the Love of Food

I don’t really eat dessert. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate it, because I love me some chocolate. But it’s just not something I consume — or make — very often.

My very good friend Annie was helping me brainstorm some ideas for blog posts and she suggested a fall-type dessert, a sort of teaser for the impending season.

We came up with baked pears with blue cheese and honey, and walnuts for texture (and because I had some in my freezer patiently waiting to be used up).

Delicious on their own. Dynamite when combined.

This recipe is super simple and a crowd-pleaser, perfect for when you want to impress company.

How about a bill banning soda sales at the House of Representatives’ cafeterias?

By Jill Richardson

I spent a few months on food stamps this year. As a single woman in San Diego, I qualified for $70 a month — less than a dollar per meal. But I’m lucky and I’m unusual because many of my friends are farmers and gardeners and I know how to forage wild foods.

Determined to stretch my $70 a month budget to somehow cover a healthy diet, I harvested wild cactus pads and edible weeds from my neighbors’ yards. Friends gave me fruit from their trees. A farmer told me to take whatever I needed from his stand at the farmers’ market. Then I used the food stamps to acquire foods I couldn’t get for free: milk, oatmeal, beans, and so on. All organic.

How one of the most common, yet misunderstood, male sexual dysfunctions can rip relationships apart.

By Jody Gummow / Alternet

“Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love,” Sigmund Freud wrote back in 1925. The founding father of psychoanalysis coined the Madonna-whore complex – a condition whereby men view women as either saintly, virgin Madonnas or sexual “whores.”

In essence, the effect of Madonna-whore on a relationship is an inability of the man to maintain sexual arousal within a committed, loving partnership. In his psyche he categorizes women into two groups: women he can admire and women he finds sexually attractive; the former he loves, the latter he devalues.

Dr. Patrick Suraci, Ph.D., and author of “Male Sexual Armor: Erotic Fantasies and Sexual Realities of the Cop on the Beat and the Man in the Street” explained the origins …

Oscars
5060 Newport Ave
Ocean Beach, Ca 92107

This review is a difficult one for me to write because in March of this year I reviewed the “Newport Avenue Yacht Club Restaurant” – virtually the same restaurant as Oscars – same owner, same address – and gave them an outstanding review. Shortly after I reviewed it – 10 days after they had opened – I was informed that it was no longer the Newport Avenue Club but was now called Oscars.

I have a new foreign language student living with me – Riccardo – and he mentioned to me that he had a delicious smoked fish taco at Oscars and wondered if I had ever eaten there. I should mention that he is only 19 and is unable to go to places like South Beach because of the age requirements. He told me the taco was one of the best he had ever had and I should try it.

So, I called my neighbor Jim and asked him if he would like to go with me to try out Oscars, particularly since he had been my partner when I went to OB Fishers. I knew he would accept and we went last Thursday, at 6:45pm.

My immediate response was that it hadn’t changed much since it was Newport Avenue Yacht Club. It looked a little more run-down; the menu board was the same black slate with writing on it but the offerings were a little more extensive. I did not see any fried fish or French fries on the menu, something I commented on in my original review.

Editor: We are crossposting an article from the conservative San Diego Rostra by Brian Brady – who has been in a dialogue with Bob Dorn – a contributor to the San Diego Free Press – over the issue of the ban on plastic bags. Dorn wrote a satirical piece in response to Brady’s disparagement of the possible ban by the City. Here, Brady outlines where he and progressives agree and disagree. The Free Press is the progeny of the OB Rag.

Freeped Today and Feeling Fabulous

by Brian Brady / San Diego Rostra / Monday, September 16, 2013

I was the subject of a satirical post on San Diego Free Press. Bob Dorn had some fun today, using some garden-variety stereotypes about liberals and conservatives, because I dared to confront a premise, proffered by OBRag’s Frank Gormlie, supporting a single-use plastic bag ban.

By Rebecca Solnit / TomDispatch.com

I would have liked to know what the drummer hoped and what she expected. We’ll never know why she decided to take a drum to the central markets of Paris on October 5, 1789, and why, that day, the tinder was so ready to catch fire and a drumbeat was one of the sparks.

To the beat of that drum, the working women of the marketplace marched all the way to the Palace of Versailles, a dozen miles away, occupied the seat of French royal power, forced the king back to Paris, and got the French Revolution rolling. Far more than with the storming of the Bastille almost three months earlier, it was then that the revolution was really launched — though both were mysterious moments when citizens felt impelled to act and acted together, becoming in the process that mystical body, civil society, the colossus who writes history with her feet and crumples governments with her bare hands.

She strode out of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City during which parts of the central city collapsed, and so did the credibility and power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI that had ruled Mexico for 70 years. She woke up almost three years ago in North Africa, in what was called the Arab Spring, and became a succession of revolutions and revolts still unfolding across the region.

City of San Diego property owners are eligible for free tree plantings.

By John P. Anderson

Back in April I wrote about a program ran by the Urban Corps of San Diego that plants free trees in front yards for property owners in San Diego. At the time I was living in an apartment and unable to partake of the green goodness but have since moved into a house – I can vote now! – and one of the first things I did upon moving in was contact the Urban Corps to get as many free trees as possible.

My yard already had a number of trees, all palms unfortunately, so although I applied for “as many as possible” on the application form I was only able to get one tree planted in my yard.

By Bob Dorn

I love my plastic bag.

No one’s going to take it from me; not some foolish enviro nut-hazard with her meds in her pocketbook, or some Japanese squeeky clean wearing a mask in the subway, or a Filner Freak-o who spends his money on Mexican marijuana that probably already has some STD buried between its cracks, or Obama, the Holy, who solved Syria all by himself (ask the cruise missiles who solved Syria!!!).

No one’s taking my plastic bags.

When the meeting first started, I was fearful that the attendance would be very low. But by 10:45am there were over 30 people in attendance for this, the first unit meeting of the Pt. Loma League of Women Voters.

Nancy Witt – the co-chair of the meeting – explained that there are different facets to the LWV; There are the unit meetings that take place in all of the 9 units throughout San Diego County. There are “special event” meetings; there are “forums” etc. Today was a “topic” meeting and all of the units were discussing the same topic.

The mayoral race candidates with be presented in a “forum” with the LWV presenting only facts and information – they cannot make any recommendations but they can bring together the candidates, the information and other information for discussion. We were assured that there will be a forum before the mayoral election.