Month: March 2018

Sometimes just the act of standing up against injustice starts to make things right. Speaking the truth to power can be redemptive. That’s how it felt last week as I watched my own family and my students (who I love like family) take part in the National School Walkout Day. If you are middle-aged like me and have participated in too many protests and political activities to count, it’s easy to start to see activism as work, a job that needs to be done but takes its toll– particularly in these grim times. You get tired, weary of the endless fight.

Then, once in a while, something happens that gives you renewed life, helps you see the world again with fresh eyes.

That’s what watching my kid get ready for the Roosevelt Middle School Walkout did for me.

Editordude: In honor of St Patrick’s Day, we publish the following piece just sent to us by Michael Steinberg, who went to Ireland a number of times during the 1980s. Happy Paddy’s Day!

By Michael Steinberg

In 1983, I was among a contingent of 82 Americans, including 7 San Diegans, who went on a fact finding tour of Northern Ireland.

What we found there was a vicious colonialism that rules through murder, lies and a concerted attempt at total social control. And a native people who exist under this everyday terror and resist it with extraordinary courage and grace.

I arrive a few days before the tour begins to explore the southern Republic a bit. I first visit the city of Limerick at the mouth of the River Shannon on the west coast. It was from here that my great-grandfather Cornelius Donahue emigrated sometime in the mid 19th century.

In a brand new article in the San Diego Reader, local writer Julie Stalmer raises the issue of whether the Nati’s shopping center will be demolished. She also provides some needed history on the original owners and some great old photos – including one of the “original” Nati.

The new Nati’s owner has proposed, Stalmer wrote, to demolish the shopping center. Stalmer got wind of this when she spoke with Amie Hayes, Historic Resources Specialist, with Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO). SOHO got involved with the issues surrounding Nati’s proposal to demolish the building, when on February 28, as part of the development process, Nati’s submitted a report to the city’s historic resources board for a preliminary historic review of Nati’s parcel.

American Soldiers Killed 504 Vietnamese Civilians Including Many Children – It Could Have Been Worse If Helicopter Pilot Hugh Thompson Hadn’t Landed and Threatened to Shoot Other Americans

In today’s Los Angeles Times, progressive professor Jon Wiener wrote an amazing piece about not only the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam on this day but of Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who stopped it.

I met Wiener when I was canvasing members of the faculty at UC Irvine to join a union – I knew him as a prolific writer for The Nation magazine back in the Eighties – and I really expected he would be sympathetic and join. He didn’t – too much local politics on campus under the bridge – I think he said. And for years, I resented his decision not to throw his fate in with others on the campus. But today, from one lefty to another, I forgave him – because of this article. He began:

Cafe Rio Mexican Grill
3309 Rosecrans
Loma Square
Point Loma

OBites Visits Cafe Rio for Promise of New Mexico Cuisine

by Bob Edwards

Ever since my first visits to Albuquerque and the Four Corners region, I’ve been in love with New Mexican cuisine. The delicious chile verde (green chili) sauce, made from Hatch or other New Mexican chile peppers is quite unlike the chile verde you find in most California Mexican food. It’s silky smooth and the taste of the roasted chiles has incredible depth.

The sauce is fantastic with enchiladas and can also be used in a stew with vegetables, rice, beans, and usually chicken or pork. The New Mexican red chile sauce, made from dried chile pods, is also a delicious treat and goes great on enchiladas or as a base for posole, the hominy stew available at most restaurants in the region.

When I heard that there was a new restaurant, Cafe Rio Mexican Grill, that serves food inspired by the cuisine of “the Rio Grande region,

Tonight’s Peninsula Planning Board meeting is the focus of efforts by some locals to save Prince Recycling – the recycling center at the center of a recent storm of controversy. Residents and businessowners in the Peninsula and the Midway area are being urged to attend the planners’ meeting to counter the push to close it down.

The Peninsula planners meet at 6:30 pm at the Point Loma Hervey Library, 3701 Voltaire Street, SD 92017.

Here is the text from a press statement put out by some local activists and Sean Foldenauer of the Foldenauer Law Group:

San Diego’s cannabis business tax brought in $358,348 in the first month of legalized recreational marijuana sales, according to early figures released to KPBS on Monday, March 12.

Local marijuana businesses are required to pay the 5 percent gross receipts tax every month, and the first due date to pay the tax was Feb. 28. A city spokeswoman said the figure was for retail transactions in the month of January.

There’s two new books by two different local Ocean Beach and Point Loma authors. One is already published in paperback and other will be released in mid-April.

Kathy Blavatt and Dianne Lane are the local authors; Kathy wrote “Ocean Beach: Where Land and Water Meet” and Dianne has written “From Where We Sail: A Family’s Six and a Half Year Journey Around the World on Sorcery“.

Every year as one of its signature events, the Ocean Beach Historical Society throws a wonderful Wisteria Garden Party on the 4700 block of Niagara.

The party is held under the largest wisteria canopy in Ocean Beach.

OBHS invites everyone to spend the afternoon in the garden of the historic O.B. Wisteria Cottage, listen to live music

The vast majority of Point Loma High School students joined a national walk-out against gun violence, this Wednesday morning – the 14th of March.

There’s 1900 students on campus the principal told me and by far most of them had gathered near the east end of the school’s football field. A few minutes before 10:00am – the hour of the walk-out – a bell went off and students began streaming towards the southern end of the school where the athletic fields are.

By time I got to the football field, massive numbers of students were listening to and cheering on a series of speakers – most of them students – plea and demand changes to how this society handles guns and violence

By Joaquin Antique

by anonymous

All the following statements are direct quotes or paraphrased from either local social media pages or comments I’ve heard in Ocean Beach:

Multiple cars vandalized on the block Those damn trolls.

Arson in our alley. Hey, I saw a troll with matted hair going through our recycling cans the same day. Must have been him that set the fire.

That stabbing on Newport last year: Probably a beef between a couple homeless guys.

Graffiti sprayed on my back wall. Homeless again.