Category: Columns

Man, did I have a good time
in OB,
much like the time a whale
I saw in a watercolor
on a table
in the middle of the street
seemed to be having
to me –

by Judi Curry

Who are these stupid people that make up these stupid laws? It is inconceivable to me that a majority of our elected officials are so stupid that they can all agree on this one.

Here is the scenario: I have an external mailbox, attached to the stucco of my house, near the front door. Yesterday I saw a person distributing flyers look through my mail before he left me his own flyer – in the mailbox, by the way, which is also against the law.

I just received an email regarding an Ex-con play, an original musical drama, Off the Hook, featuring a 15 member cast of formerly incarcerated people, which will be performed this Saturday, September 18th, at 2:00 PM at Queen Bee’s Art & Cultural Center at 3925 Ohio Street.

At the hip school
they aren’t aware
and they don’t even care
about what their
test scores might be
because they’re much too busy
rolling up their sleeves
trying to keep up with the boys and girls
with their stash of electronic accessories,

PROLOGUE: What follows was written as an appeal to our softer, more reflective and discerning greater selves as we seek a better world.

One day,
throwing
a bunch of stuff away,

Ahhh, what a time we had, my childhood friend from Tucson and I. Jim Hopkin.

Our visit was like a fantasy, as there was a time in our lives when neither he or I could have imagined a scenario wherein someday I would cruise up to a sidewalk in a nice “chine,” as we used to say, in front of Southwest Airlines and he jumps in and I whisk him to a Comfort Inn and we end the day in one of the hippest Mexican Cafe’s in town – with nary a soul in any of these places wearing a “P.U.” frown.

Back then we knew no one who had flown any where – the concept of a “colored” person staying in a hotel had not yet been implanted in our young minds – and we couldn’t eat in a cafe unless the sign above it read Jack’s Barbeque or Duke’s Drive-In.

by Judi Curry

Did any of you drive down Sunset Cliffs this weekend and get a whiff of the aroma of our neighborhood denizens?

I would have loved to have seen how the person driving the car that was right next to the skunk got into the driver’s seat. Did he step over the skunk? Get in from the passenger seat? Did the car reek? I didn’t envy that person.

When I moved into the Ocean Beach/Pt. Loma area the only skunks I saw were dead ones, usually on Canon near the trails. When they began showing their tails in my area I was surprised. There was a lot building going on, and I imagine that their “homes” were being destroyed.

by Judi Curry

No one can accuse me of being a “bush” lover, but an incident happened yesterday as I was walking my Golden Retriever that brought back my feelings of fear whenever I heard the word “bush.”

Buddy and I were walking on a grassy street, closing in on Sunset Cliffs when I noticed a gardener standing on the sidewalk, bush trimmer in hand, watching us with a wild look in his eye. We were probably 2-3 houses from him, and 3-4 houses from the Cliffs. Wouldn’t you know that Buddy decided to leave his deposit right in front of the house where the wild man stood.

by Judith Curry / August 11, 2010

I am writing this, not as a “Letter to the Editor”, but as an article with the purpose of aiding other Californians.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I remember the talk of earthquakes for as long as my memory was formed. I remember seeing pictures of the devastation of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. I remember feeling the 1987 Whittier earthquake primarily because I lived only a few miles from the epicenter. I remember the Landers earthquake of 1992; the Northridge earthquake of 1994, etc.

As a teacher, I frequently was required to have “drop drills” for my students on a monthly basis.

by Ernie McCray

It’s been a little over a year since my Nancy passed away yet moving on is still the order of the day for our children, Carlos, Tawny, Nyla and me.

The kind of grieving we’ve experienced, in our various stages of moving on, has revealed just how fragile we are and how dependent we are on each other, how glad we are to just have each other around.

And just when it seemed that the pain in our lives was toning down, one of the twins, Nyla, announced, since her boyfriend who had been unemployed for about a year found a job in Vegas, that she was packing up and leaving town. Oh, the feeling of loss raises its ugly head again. Not with fangs this time but it’s come with a bite.

For some time I’ve been wanting to say something about Betty Brown, an old friend who passed away a few weeks ago. It’s taken me a while because the pressing question for me has been how does one summarize such a noteworthy woman’s life accomplishments? Listing them would fill an extremely tall and wide notebook, not to mention exhaust the reader.

But I’ve decided to go with simplicity beginning with the reality that there are many advocates for children on the planet but not many of them, including myself, could keep up with Betty’s pace as a community activist without gasping for air.

As a child growing up in Tucson I would sometimes, on a comfortable April day, ride my beat up blue Schwinn out to the foothills – and just soak in the beauty of the Sonoran Desert’s flowers of spring as they danced in the warm breezes, showing off their brilliant yellow and purple and orange and red and blue petals that cling to their striking green stems like lovers on a honeymoon.

Such moments soothed my young soul, making all the world feel like a lilting melody sung in perfect harmony. And to stay with this idea of music as a metaphor for “good feelings,” the world’s music, at the time, did make everything seem “copacetic” as the devotees of jazz and swing used to say in their cool ness.