Category: Columns

With the economy in the tank and prospects of a recovery looking dim, everybody knew that the grocery workers were going to lose. They would either accept the gutting of their healthcare benefits and pensions or they would go out on strike and lose big. With so many people unemployed and with aggressive union busting in the air, they might as well surrender. At least that’s what lots of smart folks were saying in the local media and Southern California political circles. Everybody knew.

So much for the prevailing wisdom.

Xiang Jo — a 14-year-old laborer on an iPhone assembly line in Suzhou, China — just wanted to pay homage to someone whose vision transformed the world.

Jo had no idea the homage would cost him his job.

The trouble started Thursday morning, when word of Steve Jobs’ death spread through the factory where Jo and dozens of other young Chinese use the toxic chemical N-Hexane to clean iPhone touch screens.

Politics, Poetry, Fiction, and Music and More in the Heart of the City

The 6th annual San Diego City College International Book Fair is this week (October 3^rd to the 8^th), and it offers an impressive line-up of writers, poets, and musicians including:

• Marjorie Cohn, editor of The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse;
• Cris Mazza, author of Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls;
• Zohreh Ghahremani, author of Sky of Red Poppies;
• lê thi diem thúy, author of The Gangster We Are All Looking For;

I am so glad that I have written some positive reviews about local restaurants, because I, once again, just had a terrible meal from one of the standards.

A friend called me and said that he had a coupon for the two for one Sunday breakfast at the “Souplantation” on Midway – close to OB. I hesitated before agreeing to go with him, because I have never enjoyed the lunch or dinner I have had there. (I think they need more variety of salads.)

Paul Krugman recently wrote that:

“lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the G.O.P.’s base . . . And what this means is that modern conservatism is actually a deeply radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we’ve had for the past three generations — that is, a society that, acting through the government, tries to mitigate some of the ‘common hazards of life’ through such programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid.”

Of course this has been true for quite some time now, …

I woke up Wednesday morning feeling a bit of dread, kind of knowing that a man, who might be innocent, could end the day dead.

I decided to find as much humor in my day as I could. After unfolding my paper the word RELIEF in caps jumped out at me and lead my eyes to a photo featuring a tearful navy petty officer enjoying his newly arrived freedom to simply be who he is.

I chuckled to myself thinking how gays and lesbians can now, like us straight folks, “ask and tell” constantly, regularly, instantly. I mean we heteros can’t wait to be asked “How was she?” And we love to answer all braggy: “Hey, man, I took care of the B-I-Z!” And the woman responds to “How was he?” with: “Well, he pretty much went on without me.” But, finally: equality.

REMEMBERING BOB

You passed away two years ago today,
And it has been very hard.
I wish you would get your ass back here
And take care of your frigging yard.
You didn’t tell me what to do,
Now all your trees are covered in white-fly goo.

Editor: This was originally published on Sept 19, 2011, so the intro is somewhat dated. But I’ve picked this tomb up in the last few days to reread it – and it is definitely worth a second look.

Last week on KUSI’s Republican campaign infomercial, Carl DeMaio, Jerry Sanders, Kevin Faulconer, and all the usual suspects lined up to pound home the point that the pension scandal is the root of all things evil in San Diego.

If only we can bust city employees’ pensions, the future will be golden for San Diego’s taxpayers. It is time, they said, as the KUSI lapdogs nodded along, to save the city from the horrors brought them by the public employee unions. Other than the show trial-like atmosphere, this exercise in right-wing demagoguery was nothing new. And it explains little. Back in 2005 in the afterward to the paperback edition of Under the Perfect Sun, I addressed the emerging scandal by putting it in its larger context…

Boy, things you do when you’re seventeen.
Especially when you think you just about the coolest thing
the world has ever seen.
Know what I mean?
Now, I was cool at seventeen,
not to brag or anything,
but being a teenage male Negro
in 1955,
a dude had to be cool
just to stay alive;
That’s positively no jive….

I have had some good meals in Ocean Beach recently. “SHADES”, “NATI’S”, “OB NOODLE HOUSE,” “OB BBQ”, etc.

Tonight some friends and I decided to go to the “Village” for dinner, only to find at 6:15pm it was closed. It was suggested that we try Denny’s on Rosecrans for a fast and relatively inexpensive meal.

The first table we were shown was quite wet, so we asked for another one. Although it was wet too, the greeter came back with a handful of paper towels and dried the table.

Yesterday we marked the 10^th Anniversary of 9/11 when most Americans watched in horror at the devastation of the terrorist attacks in New York City and elsewhere but were then moved by the heroism of the first responders to the disaster—most of whom were firefighters and cops who risked their lives to help their fellow citizens. They were America’s working class heroes, the pride of the nation.

This led to a wave of appreciation of public servants like them across the country as not just New York’s finest, but public safety workers were honored in the press, at ballgames, and during community events. Here in San Diego, …

Thoughts Stemming from 9-11

My radio alarm woke me up with someone summarizing a study that found that a significant number of schools have not done much as far as engaging students in learning experiences involving 9-11. Because it’s too “controversial.” Is that not sad?

That reminds me of a man on TV, not too long after that fateful day, who said we should tell our children that nothing like this will ever happen again.