Month: April 2021

By Ernest McCray

Carlos, my youngest
and now only son,
has Covid-19.
But he’s got the battle won
it seems.

Yet, when the news reached me,
as quick as
a flash
of lightening
streaking across
the sky,
ghostly like images of
Debbie and Guy,
two children of mine
who have lived and died,
floated before my eyes
and I became weak.

Small backyard houses get a lot of attention as a solution to the housing crisis, but it’s a different idea in theory than it is when you try to put it into practice.

By Adele Peters / Fast Company

When I moved from Brooklyn back to the Bay Area a few years ago, I thought, at first, that the apartment I found was charming. It’s also very small: At the end of a long driveway, inside a former garage, it’s 240 square feet, or roughly the size of one and a half parking spaces.

By Pissed Off

I’ve been pissed off ever since the Maritime Museum has been allowed to continue to store stuff in between Spanish landing and Liberty Station.

They’ve been allowed to do this ever since the San Salvador replica was built and completed about 7 years ago.

They have fencing around their area with tarps that create a blind corner that’s very hazardous to bicyclists.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / April 22, 2021

Twenty years of studying education policy, politics and practices has been awakening. Seeing billionaires inflict their often misguided and unpopular beliefs on our nation’s public schools has made it clear how undemocratic and dangerous extreme wealth is.

They have established voucher programs routinely sending taxpayer money to religious schools even though these programs have lost decisively whenever submitted to voters. In her book Slaying Goliath, Diane Ravitch labeled these 0.1% of Americans as disrupters. She asked and answered the question “what do disrupters want?” They want:

SANDAG Presentation at Midway Planning Meeting Raises Questions

By Geoff Page

Presentations by SANDAG on the “Grand Central Station” project and the Climate Action Campaign were the items of interest at the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Planning Group’s monthly meeting Wednesday, April 21.

SANDAG

The SANDAG presentation was not on the agenda and came more as a Government Office Report on the agenda.

By David Helvarg / The Hill / April 19, 2021

Two movies nominated for Academy Awards for both “Best Picture” and ”Original Screenplay” are “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and “Judas and the Black Messiah.” They capture an iconic time in our history in ways that few earlier cinematic efforts have managed with a couple of notable exceptions. These include Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” that revealed the tactical and strategic challenges of the 1960s civil rights movement for Martin Luther King and his fellow activists and Milos Forman’s “Hair” that explicitly connected the emergence of an exuberant hippie culture to the looming death culture of the Vietnam war.

by Ernie McCray

Dear Jury: Waiting for your verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial was agonizing. No pun intended, because of what the trial was all about, but I could hardly breathe.

But when it was announced, regarding all charges, that you had found him guilty as guilty can be, air rushed from me like a river pouring into the sea.

I’ve never felt more relieved. But what does it really mean?

On Tuesday, April 20, the San Diego County Democratic Party unanimously passed a resolution that calls on the City to end SeaWorld Fireworks.

The resolution calls on the San Diego City Council to take action against the nightly fireworks that SeaWorld blasts off in a public park over Mission Bay, finding that the noise from the explosions “frightens companion animals, terrifies lonely shelter dogs and cats, and wreaks havoc on wildlife, often causing dogs and cats to flee and become lost and injured, and the toxic chemicals released into the air and water poison the environment.”

Through the resolution, the “San Diego Democratic Party calls on the City of San Diego to end this public nuisance occurring at a public park by a private for-profit corporation.”

By Geoff Page

The Peninsula Community Planning Board’s regular monthly meeting, Thursday, April 15, was mostly about procedural matters that take place each year after the March elections. This stuff doesn’t usually interest most folks. There were two other items that were of interest though.

Judging by a SANDAG presentation, it appears that SANDAG is now working for the Navy. And, a 1,029/SF, two bedroom, two bath companion unit with no parking in an RS-1-7 single family zoned neighborhood. All depressingly legal.

SANDAG

Gia Ballash gave a presentation for SANDAG describing something called the “San Diego Region Military Installation Resilience” project. Here is how SANDAG describes it:

By Colleen O’Connor

How unenlightened can the Mayor’s budget be?

Cut the libraries, the staff, the books, the safety net for children, the local artists’ displays, story times for the pre-schoolers and lots of books and computer access for seniors, students, the homeless, and others who cannot afford the luxury of private ownership.

How is this sanity?

All great cities house a great library. Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève in Paris; Trinity College Library in Dublin; Real Gabinete Português de Leitura in Rio de Janeiro; National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague; and of course the New York and Seattle Public Libraries.

OBcean present in Minneapolis while verdict was read.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter by a jury Tuesday for his role in the murder of George Floyd last May outside of a local convenience store.

Floyd’s death, and the video that showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes, became a catalyst for the country’s racial and social justice movement last summer.

A jury of six white, four Black and two multiracial jurors deliberated nine hours over two days — five hours on Monday; four hours Tuesday — before rendering a verdict.