Category: History

Wealthy but benevolent leader of “geraniums” well-known for “City Beautiful” concept and for gifts of parks to San Diego

Originally posted June 1, 2011

Late last week, Patty and I took a guided tour of the Marston House and its surrounding gardens, sited on the north end of Balboa Park. Tours are available 10 to 5, Friday through Sunday for $8 apiece. (Hours and prices have changed for the summer season, see the information below)

We took the tour of the over-one-hundred-year house and then walked the gardens – as all visitors do – on our own. The house tour took nearly an hour and it was worth it to get a glimpse into the lifestyle of one of San Diego’s early and more benevolent oligarchs – George Marston, his spouse Anna, and their children – four daughters and one son.

George Marston – you should know – was one of San Diego’s “leading” businessmen in the early 1900s. His opulent downtown department store at 5th and C streets was legendary, …

This is the second in a series, and here’s Part 1.

The Wilson Era Begins With Police Reform

A few years later, during the early seventies, a new “centrist” Republican mayor – Pete Wilson, still wearing the mantle of an advocate for “controlled growth” -, made efforts to reform the police department. But he was up against old Chief Ray Hoobler, a veteran of the old school of hard knocks – literally. Hoobler, while not media or PR savvy, was notorious for using his brown-suits to clamp down on minorities, gays, Navy sailors, young people in general, and the growing population of hippies.

In 1975, Chief Hoobler was forced to retire because he was caught lying to the City Council. This worked for Pete Wilson as it then allowed him to appoint a community-policing “reformer” as chief – Bill Kolender.

It’s been a week now since San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne went before the TV cameras and other reporters last Wednesday, May 9th, and stated:

“I want to personally apologize to every citizen of the city of San Diego, as this behavior is not expected, nor condoned, by me or anyone in the San Diego Police Department.”

He was referring, of course, to the recent spate of allegations – he called it a “unprecedented spike” – of officer misconduct involving nine individuals from his police force, just within the last several months. Eye brows were raising all over town each time the media reported another cop arrested. There had been arrests for DUI, domestic violence, rape, excessive force, ….

May 4, 1970: Four students murdered, nine wounded by National Guardsmen, on the campus of Kent State in Kent, Ohio.

Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Jefferey Miller and Sandra Scheuer were killed in the 13 second fusillade of 67 shots fired by the Guardsmen, after an order to fire was given.

(Originally posted May 4, 2010)
I was sitting on my porch this afternoon pondering the meaning of Kent State. I had more tears last year when I wrote a post about it. Yet – here it is – the 40th anniversary. Kent State, hmmm, OB, hmmmm. Something was there.

And then I figured it out! I figured out how Ocean Beach is connected to the Kent State massacre of May 4th, 1970. Or vice versa.

I was in college when it happened. I was attending UCSD and in my senior-year when it all came down. I had been involved in the campus anti-Vietnam movement and was deeply affected by Kent State,

Jim Miller is a professor who practices what he teaches.

Each semester, Miller guides dozens of students through his English and Labor Studies classes at San Diego City College. He has played key roles in literary projects such as the school’s International Book Fair as well as the San Diego Writers Collective. He serves as a political action vice president and does community outreach for the American Federation of Teachers Local #1931.

And as if he wasn’t busy enough already, Miller also finds the time to crank out the occasional book.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl—and now Fukushima.

This latest and hopefully last nuclear disaster ironically has struck the very land first devastated by two US atomic bombs.

Unlike those first two horrors, however, those of late in Japan were never supposed to happen.

The six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, like all others around the planet, were deemed safe and robust.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the end of the March for California’s Future, a 48 day, 352-mile march through the Central Valley to the State Capitol. There, on a rainy day in Sacramento, I was one of many union folks, students, and religious and community leaders who spoke to a crowd of thousands gathered to protest the ever-more draconian cuts to education and social services.

All the way from Los Angeles to Sacramento we carried the message that California needs a government and economy that works for everyone, not just the rich.

The Ocean Beach Historical Society Presents:

Author Linda Pequegnat’s “This Day in San Diego History”

At the PL United Methodist Church – 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd. (O.B.)

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt/ExcuseMeImWriting.com

An annual remembrance of the 19 April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City

Ladies and gentlemen and children: See before you the crumbled concrete and teddy bears, the wreaths and forlorn love notes, …

“Suddenly, a season of peace seems to be warming the world,” the New York Times exulted on the last day of July 1988. Protracted and bloody wars were ending in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua, and between Iran and Iraq. But the most dramatic development was still to come.

In December 1988, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared the cold war over. “The use or threat of force no longer can or must be an instrument of foreign policy,” he said. “This applies above all to nuclear arms.”

By E.A. Barrera / April 13, 2011

“You don’t have to be in the military to serve and defend your country. That s the duty of all of us.” – Lewis Meyer – January 8, 2010

Lewis Meyer was a fireman who became a prisoner of war in Vietnam from February 1, 1968 to March 27, 1973. He was taken prisoner during the Tet Offensive and kept for five years under the most brutal conditions a man could suffer through.

When he returned home, he found a world eager to forget his trauma as it was a nation’s trauma.