Month: May 2020

Via Steve Zivolich

Has this been an elaborate plan by our dogs to get us to stay home with them more and take daily walks?

Strangest mothers day ever. Sent my wife an ecard; the third try went through and arrived one day late.

Thinking of contacting all the women who told me they would not touch me with 10 foot pole; and asking if the would consider modifying it to a 6 foot pole?

San Diego lifeguards were busy at Sunset Cliffs on Tuesday, May 12, with two rescue operations.

The first rescue was of a 23 year old woman who suffered major trauma when she fell 30 feet off the cliffs to the beach below. The SDFD helicopter was brought in to hoist her up to the bluff top and then she was transported to a local hospital. What the status is of the unidentified woman is unknown at this time. Fox5

The Rules Committee of the San Diego City Council meets Wednesday, May 13 to consider placing a measure that would dismantle the 30 foot height limit in the Midway District on the November ballot.

Councilmembers Jennifer Campbell and Chris Cate are pushing the idea. Campbell represents District 2, of course, which includes the Midway, as well as much of the coastal areas of the city.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the public will have very little say in how the Rules Committee – or the full Council for that matter – votes on this crucial vote, a vote seen as an end-run around Prop D, passed by San Diego voters overwhelmingly in 1972. A group in opposition to this move, Save Everyone’s Access,

By Joni Halpern

We have just completed our Mother’s Day celebration without the traditional reliance on buying power to attest to our love of the women who have mothered us. We have sent online deliveries if we could and zoomed ourselves with varied success into the two-dimensional spaces of each other’s screens. We have texted, phoned, and snail-mailed our greetings. But we have not been able to hug.

How unexpectedly descriptive is the absence of a hug, for in not being available, it emphasizes the importance of an embrace. Two arms wrapped around us, pulling us closer to a loving heart, a gesture that could impart power and conflict, for it often occurs between two beings of varying strength. And yet our surrender to a hug is a relief, a comfort, an admission that we persist in life’s most strenuous endeavors because we are loved.

On the other side of a hug is the fact that we concede our need for others.

OB Street Fair & Chili Cook-Off Cancelled

The 41st annual OB Street Fair & Chili Cook-Off has been officially cancelled for this year. It will be held next year, on Saturday, June 26, 2021. Originally set for June 27 this year, the annual event – like many other things – had to be cancelled due to health concerns. Denny Knox, ED of the OB Mainstreet Assoc which sponsors the fair, told the Beacon:

“We had to make the call. We just couldn’t commit to signing a contract. The risk is too great.
Some OB Businesses Have Limited “Openings”

OB Teacher Concerned About Opening Schools Too Soon

Joanne Ensign who teaches at Ocean Beach Elementary School, says it’s a challenge teaching kindergarten, but “It’s going well. Kids are participating…. kids are doing it, they’re doing it.” But Ensign is concerned about talk of opening the schools in July. She needs a break, she told 7NBC.

BRAVA! Mara Elliott

By Colleen O’Connor

Kudos to City Attorney Mara Elliott for doing what is in the best interest of San Diegans. She has made several clear, lucid and legally cogent arguments against the sweetheart developer/SDSU deal. All of them legitimate.

(https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/politics/politics-report-city-not-united-on-sdsu-deal/)

First of all, the bidding for the largest piece of prime real estate in San Diego should have gone to open, competitive bidding. Not restricted to two ballot propositions between San Diego State and its need for some housing and a new, larger football stadium and Soccer City.

The American Legislative Exchange Council’s Agenda is on Full Display

It’s easy to stay outraged these days, whether it’s reading about the COVID-19-infected leader of the “ReOpen NC” protests whining about her “rights” being violated by quarantine, the “COVID Mary” of Louisville being arrested after going to the grocery store while knowingly infected, or the knucklehead owner of the Orange County bar who defied state pandemic restrictions, opened up, and told the TV news that everyone would be OK because, “on a sunny day like this, I don’t feel like anybody’s at risk.”

At present, it appears there is an endless well of dangerous idiocy.

And when you watch the Trump Administration ignoring their own guidelines as White House aides get sick and the national response slides into a chaotic patchwork quilt of ineffective policies, one might just conclude that we are dealing with a tragic case of national incompetence.

Ocean Beach organizations are considering turning 5 or so blocks of Bacon Street into a “slow street” which means converting it into one-way traffic going southbound, leaving the northbound lane for pedestrians, skateboarders and bicyclists. It would be from Voltaire to Saratoga.

On Wednesday night at their electronic meeting, the OB Planning Board voted in favor of making the temporary conversion. The initiative for this, for the proposed street change came from the Slow Street Initiative of the city of San Diego. Streets are blocked off with signs to through-traffic – and a section of Diamond Street in Pacific Beach has already made the conversion, as well as a street in Normal Heights.

For the last couple of years, OB planners have been talking up the idea of making Bacon a “bike-friendly” street. Those in favor think now is especially the time to make the changes, as it would make it makes it easier for people to run, bike and walk during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially since sidewalks don’t always provide six feet separation.

By Lois Beckett / The Guardian / May 7, 2020

A black lawmaker came to Michigan’s capitol with an escort of armed black citizens on Wednesday, days after white protesters with guns staged a volatile protest inside the state house, comparing the Democratic governor’s public health orders to “tyranny”.

The state representative Sarah Anthony, 36, said she wanted to highlight what she saw as the failure of the Michigan capitol police to provide legislators with adequate security during the protest, which saw demonstrators with rifles standing in the legislative chamber above lawmakers. “When traditional systems, whether it’s law enforcement or whatever, fail us, we also have the ability to take care of ourselves,” she told the Guardian. Anthony became the first African American woman elected to represent her district in Lansing, Michigan’s capital, in 2018.

Exactly 50 years ago today, May 8, 1970, the anti-Vietnam war was thrust upon the sleepy neighborhood of Point Loma.

4,000 mainly college students showed up in the early hours of that day on Catalina Boulevard and created a passive resistance march and blockade of the gates of NEL, the Naval Electronics Lab (since renamed). NEL was known for its war-related research and the action was seen as a blow against the Vietnam war by thousands of trying to jam up the gears of the war machine.

Nixon had just invaded Cambodia instead of winding down the war, as he had promised. Protests at colleges and universities blew up across the nation. Protests at Kent State in Ohio turned deadly when National Guardsmen fired into crowds of unarmed demonstrators, killing four and wounding eleven others. Fifty years ago this day, the entrance to the military facility was effectively blocked

George Winne, 23, a History major at UC San Diego strolled out to the middle of Revelle Plaza on Sunday, May 10, 1970. It was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. A huge anti-war protest had occurred earlier that weekend in downtown San Diego. It’s not known whether Winne attended it, but it’s unlikely.

President Nixon had invaded Cambodia and the campuses across the nation blew up in protests. One protest at Kent State University in Ohio ended in the deaths of four students shot by National Guardsmen.

When Winne came out to the plaza, he carried a sign, which read, “In God’s name, end this war.” It was a simple message. He also carried rags which he had saturated with gasoline.

The San Diego Community Review Board on Police Practices has been requested to investigate the arrest of an African-American woman on Friday, May 1, at Ocean Beach while walking her dog.

Filing a complaint with the Board, Francine Maxwell, president of the local NAACP office, said she wants it to investigate the arrest – an arrest which created a stir after it was recorded and shared on social media. Maxwell said three officers involved in the arrest used excessive force and she questioned whether they targeted the woman because of her race. Maxwell asked:

“Was she arrested because of her race? Was she assaulted because of her race? Would the officers have found a better way to deal with the situation if (she) had been white?”