Month: September 2014

Local Indians Called Point Loma “Mat Loan“

By Charlie Best / Special to the OB Rag

Five elders of the Kumeyaay Nation spoke out in Point Loma on Tuesday, September 16th. At the invitation of La Playa Trail Association, they presented an hour-long program at the Point Loma Assembly, where roughly 60 people attending the event – with strong contingent coming from OB.

Campo chairman Paul Cuero kicked off the affair with an overview of the Kumeyaay Nation, which we learned is made up of 12 bands living in 13 reservations north of the Mexican border, and five communities spread throughout northern Baja California. Kumeyaay are responsible for the protection of a little over three million acres in San Diego County.

By Hannah Wilder

Over 200 people attended an open house at the newly renovated Episcopal Church Center at 2083 Sunset Cliffs Blvd, Friday, September 12. Open to the community, the affair mostly drew people from the congregations of the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego; pastors from nearby churches and neighbors also attended.

The facilities were renovated as part of the diocesan Build the Serving Church capital campaign, which focused, in part, on creating a new center for the diocese. Working with Platt Whitelaw Architects, Canon Nancy R. Holland remodeled the rooms in order to maximize multi-purpose use. Every effort was made to use earth-friendly materials, and to optimize the free flow of air and light.

Overcast skies didn’t appear to keep anyone away from the beach on Saturday morning, as hundreds of locals descended on the Ocean Beach Pier for the OB Town Council’s annual pancake breakfast.

The cooler temperatures may have even helped turnout, providing a respite from the seemingly never-ending heat wave that’s pummeled the county, as lines formed early and stayed strong through the morning, with Council volunteers hustling to serve a crowd of the hungry and civic-minded. Workers fought to stay cool inside the Walk On Water Café near the end of the pier, with the kitchen operating at full capacity and three extra griddles fired up to assist in pancake production.

By Christina Dallenbach

Many of the Climate March participants in downtown San Diego on Sunday, Sept. 21, found their way back to Ocean Beach, where Earthdance festivities, though organizers had cross-promoted the climate march, had been underway since 2 p.m.

Scott Stephens, front-man for Liquid Blue , an OB-based band known for its social activism and billed as “the world’s most traveled band,” said a healthy crowd had been stopping by for different portions of the event, though the venue really started to fill in the late afternoon as the justice-minded turned their attention from the People’s Climate March to Earthdance.

By Chris Dallenbach

Sunday was a busy day for activism in San Diego and around the world, as 1,000 or more people filled Civic Center Plaza downtown to demand leadership from government in taking action to stem the tide of climate change, taking part in the People’s Climate March.

The event world-wide featured more than 2,700 demonstrations including an event that drew an estimated 400,000 people in New York City.

By Jim Miller

It’s Banned Books Week and what better way to kick it off than with a salute to America’s first banned book: Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan published in 1637? New English Canaan is a three-volume affair containing Morton’s sympathetic observations about Native Americans along with a celebration of the beauty of the natural world and a fierce satire of the Puritans.

While some scholars point to other books such as John Eliot’s The Christian Commonwealth (written in the late 1640s) or William Pynchon’s The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption (1650)as the first books to be banned by the Puritans for theological or historical reasons, Morton’s New English Canaan precedes both of these texts and the conflict surrounding it is far more important and illustrative with regard to the political and cultural history of the United States.

At the annual Surfrider-sponsored Paddle for Clean Water, hundreds of surfers, paddle boarders, kayakers, boogieboarders, and others jumped into the Pacific Ocean at and around the OB Pier, on Sunday, September 21. It was the 23rd anniversary of the organization’s Paddle for Clean Water event around Southern California’s longest pier in a mass display of solidarity for the protection of our precious coastlines.

They came from far and wide, they were young and old, and all participants were fed a free breakfast.

Shamu, we hardly knew ye

By Linda Perine /San Diego Woman’s Democratic Club

For most of us it has been a slow, painful process to understand that our love affair with cute, cuddly, smiley Shamu has made us participants in a cold-blooded business that imprisons and mistreats sentient, social creatures in ways that turn the stomach and shock the conscience.

Concerned environmentalist and civic leaders have been telling us for years that the capture of orcas was nasty and brutal

By Lori Saldaña / Part Two of Four

In Part One of this series, Lori Saldaña discussed her motivations and personal considerations leading up to her run for the California Assembly in 2004.

At the end of yesterday’s installment, she’d just been told by a Los Angeles woman’s organization at the end of a fundraising presentation that they viewed her a good candidate for school board, not the statehouse.

They ultimately endorsed my opponent- a woman with no prior elected experience who had worked as a pollster for the state teacher’s union. Fortunately, I was unwilling to accept these evaluations as the final say on my qualifications to run, or my ability to serve in state-level office.

Drinking diet soda could cause weight gain, obesity, even diabetes research suggests

CBC News /September 17, 2014 1

Artificial sweeteners may exacerbate, rather than prevent, metabolic disorders such as Type 2 diabetes, a study suggests.

Calorie-free artificial sweeteners are often chosen by dieters in part because they are thought not to raise blood sugar levels.

In Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature, researchers report that artificial sweeteners increase the blood sugar levels in both mice and humans by interfering with microbes in the gut. Increased blood sugar levels are an early indicator of Type 2 diabetes and metabolic disease.

At their most recent Board meeting on September 10th, the Ocean Beach Town Council passed a resolution that called on government – all levels of government – to deal with chronic homelessness in OB, at the beaches and coastal areas of San Diego and the San Diego River channel. It also stated that it should be a priority to end the homelessness of veterans.

The resolution passed was in support of addressing chronic homelessness “with best practices”, calling upon the City and County of San Diego to bring homelessness resources, outreach, and programs to the San Diego coastal communities.

It read:

The Ocean Beach Town Council calls upon the City and County of San Diego to now bring their successful practices, and homelessness resources and programs …

Have you checked your calendar for this weekend recently? Yeah, it’s full. There’s plenty happening in OB and around the City – so, here’s the short list:

Saturday, Sept. 20th

Annual OB Pier Pancake Breakfast – 7:30 am – Noon

People’s Climate March – 12:30 pm at City Hall

This coming Sunday is the People’s Climate March in New York City, here in San Diego, and elsewhere around the world.

Folks will gather at City Hall at 12:30 to call for a strong Climate Action Plan, stop at the

COME INSIDE FOR DETAILS…