Month: July 2019

Appellate Court Rules San Diego County Must Vacate Approvals of Hoskings Ranch Subdivision Plan

By Nina Erlich-Williams / Public Good PR

Late last week, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal published a decision that reverses a Superior Court ruling in the case Cleveland National Forest Foundation et al. v. County of San Diego. The July 25th decision held that San Diego County officials acted wrongly when they approved a map for the subdivision of the 1,400-acre Hoskings Ranch near Julian.

The court found the subdivision would have set the stage to replace ranching with residential development on the property, all while allowing the property owner to enjoy tax breaks intended to keep the land in agriculture. “This decision is an important victory in the long effort to protect San Diego County’s agricultural land and open space from sprawling development,” said Cleveland National Forest Foundation Director Duncan McFetridge.

by Ernie McCray

Love lifted me!
Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help,
Love lifted me!

Oh, how I used to love hearing Sister Lillie Walls light up Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church singing that song on many a Sunday morn.

She had a silky deeply sincere voice that ranged between soprano and contralto that just settled into your bones and got you up on your feet and got you through the week until the next Sunday came along and love could lift you again.

We needed that like a junkie needs heroin. To “maintain,” as we used to say, considering we lived day to day in Tucson, Arizona, a Jim Crow town, where we, not to get into any detail at this point, were expected to, basically, stay in our “place”: out of sight.

Before I even started school I knew that wasn’t right.

Nuclear Shutdown News July 2019

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.

San Francisco – October 17, 1989. It was my birthday. I was four stories up in Frisco, in my brother’s place, visiting while he was in New York. Looking south, I could see the Goodyear Blimp hovering over Candlestick Park, where the Bay Bridge World Series game – Giants vs. Oakland Athletics – was about to start as Friday rush hour approached.

Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, a humungus concussion jolted everything,

by Sonia Fernandez, University of California – Santa Barbara / Phys-Org / July 31, 2019

To most people, a beach is a beach. You could likely take an image of almost any urban beach in Southern California—the flat, mostly featureless expanse of sand against blue-green water and blue skies—swap it with one of nearly any other urban beach in Southern California, and chances are that only a trained eye would notice the difference. Some of these differences lie just beneath the surface, however, and are actually quite important ecologically.

Dig just few inches into the sand on many beaches in Southern California—home to some of the most biologically diverse sandy beaches in the world—and you’ll find it teeming with life such as sand crabs, clams and beach hoppers. But for about a third of the sandy beaches extending from Santa Barbara to San Diego

A third member of the San Diego Congressional delegation has come out and called for impeachment of Trump. Congressman Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, released a minute and half video on Friday, July 26, calling for the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against the president.

Levin joins Congressmen Scott Peters and Juan Vargas, also Democrats who represent segments of the area, who have come out for impeachment.

In his video, Levin cites Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings on ten instances where Trump obstructed justice. He “also criticized Trump’s encouragement of foreign interference with U.S. elections and “contempt” for Democratic norms and institutions, such as the president and his administration’s refusal to respond congressional requests for documents,”

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner / July 29, 2019

We know how it’s played at the Del Mar racetrack. There are winners. There are losers. It’s a brutal ordeal for the horses but there’s a hefty payoff in the offing for a certain percentage of track regulars.

City politics has a lot in common with horse racing. But while it takes years of selective breeding and training to produce a winning horse, a winning candidate can be created through selective inbreeding, deft maneuvering, and discrete fingers on the scale.

To illustrate what this means in real time, consider the jarring juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated stories that appeared this month in the news–practically on the same day. Read them separately and you get a hint of the embedded gentleman’s agreement that controls San Diego civic life.

On Friday, July 26, Councilwoman Barbara Bry called for a moratorium on electric scooters in San Diego citing safety issues and lack of permitting. Bry, representing District 1 on the Council, is running for mayor against Assemblymember Todd Gloria, who has taken a different stance on the scooter issue.

Bry, who is also City Council President Pro Tem, released a public statement, saying, “Enough is enough – scooter companies have had their opportunity.” She laid out a list of problems the scooters have caused in San Diego, according to Morgan Cook at the San Diego Union-Tribune:

… injuries, strain on city resources, private companies going onto private property to retrieve scooters, and a “scooter graveyard” where the vehicles pile up, posing a long-term environmental threat. …

By Joni Halpern

Since 1896, Ohio voters have picked the winning candidate in all but two presidential elections – 1944 and 1960 – giving rise to the state’s renown as a “bellwether” to which candidates cannot afford to turn a deaf ear. If Ohioans are going to be so influential, maybe we could help inform their future choices by sharing some concerns from the Golden State.

Dear Ohio,

Remember the days when every presidential candidate had to tell us how great we were? Whenever they spoke to us, they had to tell us we were the greatest country in the world, we were the most powerful, we had the mightiest military, the biggest economy, we were the leader of the free world. We demanded this. “American exceptionalism” is what they called it, and we couldn’t get enough of it.

Well, no more of that. Today we have wiped our hands of world leadership, slipped off the pedestal of our inflated self-image, and begun to talk about what’s really bothering us.

by Jill Castellano & Brad Racino / inewsource / July 25, 2019

Twenty-one researchers from the University of California San Diego were involved in a study performed on babies in China that has been called unethical, risky and misleading. Experts say the experiment likely would not have passed an ethics review in the United States.

The experiment was a new surgical treatment for infants with cataracts and involved an eye incision in the hopes that the lens would regrow and work properly.

Dr. Kang Zhang, the former UCSD chief of eye genetics who resigned this month, helped design the study.

Fiddler’s Green
2760 Shelter Island Drive
San Diego, CA 92106
619-222-2216

By Judi Curry

I have been to Fiddler’s Green many times. Their Monday night steak special brings many locals to their restaurant when other restaurants have sluggish sales.

But I had heard about their breakfast, served only on Saturday 8-12 pm and 8-1:00 pm on Sundays and decided to try it with Hugh and Hitomi. We were VERY glad that we did.

The menu was extensive, including over 20 items including Burrito’s, Biscuit and Gravy, Eggs Benedict, etc. and many different bar drinks including Bottomless Mimosas ($11); Screwdrivers, Bloody Mary’s, etc.

But what made the decision so difficult was besides having a nice menu, there were 5 additional “specials.” There was a Chorizo Omelet, a Denver Omelet, a Machaca Omelet, Pork Chops and Eggs, and Banana Pancakes. It took the three of us some time to finally decide what to order.

By Jim Miller

Anyone who has ever cared for small children knows how central the role of animals is for fostering imagination and compassion in young people.

In my family’s case, our son’s childhood was awash in stuffed animals—beavers, raccoons, skunks, elephants, badgers, bears, rabbits, and a plethora of other creatures — every one of whom had a name, relatives, and a full-blown set of connections with other animals as well as with our family and friends.

His little pals would come over and learn the stories of our animal friends as would our grown-up pals. All of these animals had different voices and personalities and origin stories. It was our own domestic mythology for an imaginary chain of being.

Of course, everything was heavily anthropomorphized,

Jeff Stone captured this sunset on Saturday, July 27 from an upstairs window.