Month: September 2020

By Colleen O’Connor

Historians, writers, journalists, astrologers and even amateurs sometimes coin a phrase that perfectly describes an entire epoch. Or a decade.

Many of these “Age of” descriptions come long after the fact. For example, the “Age of Exploration” or the “Age of Empires.”

The truly magnificent titles capture so much than just a decade. Some span centuries. Others end quickly. The “Enlightenment.” “The Age of Reason.” “The Dark Ages.”

And they are defined and remembered in multiple forms; all personal. Literature, sports, music, art, movies, economics and politics.

Take the “Gilded Age” known for the lopsided wealth and extravagance generated by railroads, industrialization, with cosseted nouveau riche existing alongside abject poverty.

Or Edith Wharton’s, “Age of Innocence.” The writing of which, she said allowed her to find “a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America… it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914.” And the first “world” war.

Then there are the obvious ones. The “Atomic Age.” The “Industrial Age.” “The Space Age.”

By Jim Miller

It’s that time again. The world is burning. The sky is hazy from smoke in the Southland, Bladerunner-orange over San Francisco, and a tenth of the state of Oregon is under evacuation.

I’ll try not to write the same column that I did last year during fire season.

Or the year before that.

Or the several years before that.

With the media screaming about these fires it finally seems that the “unprecedented” angle is having its last gasp. Gavin Newsom is sick of climate deniers, and the connection between the extreme heat and the fires seems to finally be unquestioned.

As I write this on a Friday afternoon, my friends and family in the Bay Area can’t leave their homes for fear of toxic air. Family in Portland are watching a megafire come their way.

Lost Parking Spaces on Newport Ave

As OB restaurants and bars responded to the new COVID reality, they applied for and were granted the authority to set up outside – and in the process took over Newport Ave parking spaces. Out of a total of 204 parking places between Abbott and Sunset Cliffs, 45 have been occupied by tables and chairs of the eateries. It’s a trade-off, certainly.

New Management of OB Hostel Acknowledges Counter-Culture

Donations Starting to Flow For Prop E – Demolition of 30 Foot Height Limit in Midway

Coastal Tide Pools Being “Loved to Death”

Point Loma Sisters Start a COVID Safety Course for Small Businesses

It is true. It is not hyperbole. It is not partisan over-reach. President Trump lied about Covid-19 and now nearly 200,000 of our fellow Americans have died.

Sure, there were a handful of deaths and cases by early February when Trump told The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, “This is deadly stuff,” and “You just breathe the air,” the president explained, “and that’s how it’s passed.”

This is not like the other 20,000 plus falsehoods that Trump has uttered since taking up residence in the White House. These lies about the virus were fatal.

• On February 24, Trump tweeted to the world, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
• On February 27, he said, “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
• On March 10, he said, “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

So, why did Trump say all this? Why did he lie? Why didn’t he fulfill his duty to protect American citizens?

On March 19, Trump told Woodward, ”I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

By Joni Halpern

Residents of San Diego County have long had concerns about the quality of our physical environment.

The entire slow-growth movement that brought Pete Wilson to the mayoralty, for example, came about because San Diegans worried that unfettered development would overcrowd the landscape and turn the city into another Los Angeles. Never mind that in his tenure, from December 1971 to January 1983, Mayor Wilson presided over unprecedented growth.

As a coastal region, San Diego has always been in a love-hate relationship with developers.

On one hand, we need more housing to shelter our growing population. On the other hand, we fear the loss of livable communities, the feeling of neighborhoods, the relief of open space and proximity to green spaces, the safety of pedestrian walkways. These necessities of livable communities are already at risk and can be completely lost with on-street parking and hundreds of new residents seeking refuge from densely packed multi-family developments.

Politics in this region is a smoldering battle between community groups and forces advocating the reduction of constraints on development.

ACT II: A Cautionary Tale About What a Council Member’s Negligence, Lack of Independence, Inept Management, and Behind-the-Scenes Manipulation Can Do to a City

Scene One: Setting the stage for the winners… and losers

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner / September 10, 2020

There’s no denying it– life feels out of control nowadays. Upended. Throw in the national political scene and it’s enough to push you over the edge.

But gird yourself for some good news. Here at home we’re blessed with the extraordinary opportunity to seize control of San Diego’s political destiny. It’s no exaggeration.

The person we choose as our next mayor (Barbara Bry? Todd Gloria?) will shape the quality of daily life for more than 1½ million San Diegans for years to come. Which one can we trust with the power to control who gets what in our city… who benefits from the policies, decisions, contracts, appointments, agreements, awards, favors, negotiations, and other goodies originating in City Hall… and who gets left with the crumbs?

Based on Todd Gloria’s history and campaign contributors, the answer is clear: Mr. Gloria is the wrong choice for the mayor’s job.

By Kathy Blavatt

On a warm day in Spring day after a night of rain, I trudged through dense greenery in my back yard. I heard a bit of noise a couple of feet away and realized I was standing next to a skunk. The skunk was busy happily digging and could care less that I was beside him.

A week later, while examining my passionfruit plant, I found a baby opossum below the vines. The awkward youth looked at me, then slowly walked away.

Interestingly, my thick viny passion fruit plant that produces much green fruit slightly bigger than golf balls goes missing long before they change to burgundy-red sweet ripen fruit. I think that opossum may have made the large lush plant his home and snack bar. I suspect he has quite a belly on him these days!

Other years, I have had some very bold raccoons making their grocery runs through my yard.

It is these kinds of experiences that make me feel like I am living in the country.

To top things off, my husband told me he saw an amazing piece of aerodynamics as a parrot divebombed my apple tree plucking the fruit without slowing as he headed straight back up into the sky.

By Joni Halpern

We are fast coming to a crossroads in our life as an American people. We shall either be brothers and sisters emerging from a frenzy of chaos into the light of our motto, “Out of many, one.” Or we shall hack apart the bonds of our American family, wrapping our hatred and hostility toward our fellow Americans in a flag of patriotism.

With the former choice, we will revitalize our democracy. With the latter, we will shred our stripes and scatter our stars until they are strewn across the barren fields of our future as the United States of America. We are only 50-some days from our destiny.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected President, I have tried to understand my fellow Americans who support him. At first, it was said they felt forgotten by mainstream politics. Their economic futures had been lost in the closures of manufacturing plants and the loss of thousands of other jobs to global forces. No one in Washington cared. People who supported Donald Trump said they wanted someone would take seriously their hunger for economic, social and political justice.

ACT I : A Cautionary Tale About What a Mayor’s Negligence, Lack of Independence, Inept Management, and Behind-the-Scenes Manipulation Can Do to a City

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner / September 8, 2020

Scene One: Let’s talk politics

We can start by noticing that “politics” is simply the exercise of power that determines who gets what, when, and how.

It means that on election day, either Barbara Bry or Todd Gloria will be handed the power to determine which beneficiaries will prosper (for decades to come) from the policies, decisions, contracts, agreements, awards, favors, negotiations, and other goodies originating in City Hall.

So before we decide which candidate deserves the political power to determine who gets what, when, and how, we might want to know which one can be trusted to take the interests of the public seriously enough to place it ahead of all others.

And of course we need to be sure about which candidate has the ability and integrity to successfully oversee and manage our deteriorating, problem-plagued city.

These are not frivolous questions.

By Judi Curry

Nightly since before July 4th, my southern Ocean Beach neighborhood has gone to sleep and been awakened by the sound of firecrackers. I can count on one hand how many nights this has not been the case. They start early and go on until the wee hours of the night.

Frequently there are large parties with cars parked in the Sunset Cliffs parking lots, with cars parked on Sunset Cliffs itself, and with cars parked on all of the side streets leading to the ocean. Those cars that are parked in the lots almost always have lights with them to shine on the revelers dancing, smoking, and shooting off firecrackers. (Please notice that I purposely use the word “firecrackers” – not fireworks.) Yes, sometimes fireworks are used, but usually it is M80s that echo off the water’s edge and project all the way up to Santa Barbara Street. (Just ask people that live near the Thursday Club.)

Editordude: San Diego Bay suffered through the Trump Boat Parade #2 in on Sunday. Luckily, no boats were swamped here – but other Trump boat parades keep sinking other boats.

Locally, the biggest-Trump media supporter, KUSI, predicted there would be 2,000 boats and 50,000 spectators.

Our reporter on the scene Sunday at San Diego Bay filed this post:

By John Michael Williams

I arrived onsite, east-facing Ullman St., and parked under the lone palm tree on the south side of the block, at 12:19PM. It was 93 degrees F according to my car, but haze still veiled the mountain backdrop of the cityscape and bay and bit of white cloud drifted overhead as seven piston-engine planes, in groups of five and two, overflew the bay and left contrails as they passed.

At first glance, it was obvious that this Parade would not replicate the previous one.