OB Rag

Have you missed Judi Curry’s bloggings? We have.

Judi writes the Widder Curry column and often does restaurant reviews and other musings of life here in OB and on the Peninsula. Yet she has not been filing any columns of late.

And there is a darn good reason why she’s not writing these days – she just had surgery on her left hand and is left typing with only one hand for a while.

Shinpei Takeda, the artist who designed and produced the artistic and newly-constructed comfort station on the beach at the foot of Brighton Avenue, has come out and defended his use of quotes from the OB Rag. And in doing so, he calls for the beginning “of a dialogue” on “individual freedom of ideas, opinions and artist expressions.”

Takeda earned a nomination for an Orchid Award from the San Diego Architecture Foundation for the artwork of the comfort station, which will be announced this month.

In a brand new post at sdnews.com – the online version of the Beacon – Takeda has responded to some accusations made recently by an OB man upset with some of the quotes, which was reported by the newspaper.

By Kenny Goldberg / KPBS / October 1, 2012

Medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996. But today in San Diego County, many patients are having trouble getting their hands on the drug. That’s because all of the openly operating storefronts that sell marijuana have been shut down.

In response, activists in four local cities have placed measures to authorize medical marijuana dispensaries on the November ballot. But even if the measures win, patients might ultimately lose.

Vey Linville has severe emphysema. He needs bottled oxygen to survive. When Linville was first diagnosed, doctors told him without a double lung transplant, he’d soon be dead. Linville got his affairs in order.

By Kristin Rawls /Alternet

Just weeks into the 2012-2013 school year education issues are already playing a starring role in the national conversation about America’s future. Because it’s an election year, the presidential candidates have been busy pretending there are many substantial distinctions between them on education policy (actually, the differences are arguably minimal).

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing

It is a no-brainer to predict that the anti-human trafficking ballot initiative in California, Proposition 35, will pass by a landslide in November. The measure’s increased prison sentences and fines for labor and sex traffickers are popular responses to crime.

Even Maxine Doogan, spokesperson for the measure’s primary opposition, said Prop 35 is going to pass: “Everyone is against human trafficking. Of course we need to throw the book at human traffickers.”

But Doogan, the founder of Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project, a sex worker advocacy group, is not at all pleased with the measure’s inevitable success.

Neither are civil libertarians, if the ACLU’s opposition is any indication.

Alternet / By Sarah Jaff (Originially published Sept. 27, 2012)

Government programs are helping ease poverty in red states, despite the GOP’s best efforts.

Americans love nothing more than a good Red-State-Vs.-Blue-State argument, especially during election time.

So a new story in USA Today, looking at the changes in income, state by state, since the beginning of the Great Recession, of course breaks down the results into “red,” “blue” and “swing” states. It declares that red states have seen incomes grow 4.6 percent since 2007, adjusted for inflation, while blue states have only seen incomes grow 0.5 percent. In swing states?

There was barely a seat available at last night’s meeting called by the OB Woman’s Club to discuss the recent sexual assaults in Ocean Beach. Nearly 50 people – over a quarter of them men – crowded into the building at the corner of Muir and Bacon – just yards from a violent sexual assault that took place during the wee hours of August 25th.

Becky Sorensen, vice-president of the club, opened the meeting and welcomed everyone. The meeting had been set up out of frustrations, apparently, at the weak response women had received when they brought up their concerns about the assaults and peeping tom at the OB Town Council meeting recently. A number of individuals approached the leadership of the Woman’s Club that night out in front of the Masonic Hall after the Town Council and asked if a meeting could be held there. Becky and Celeste McClure jumped into the task and printed up a flier and began distributing them around town.

Someone had to do it. Someone or something had to step up and take the lead for Ocean Beach in bringing together the villagers on this latest community outrage: the sexual assaults and the peeping tom.

And yes, the OB Woman’s Club did it. They have organized a community townhall meeting tonight – Wednesday, October 3rd. The meeting will be at the Woman’s Club at 7pm. The Club is located at 2160 Bacon Street.

A recent poll of Southern California residents found that most of them want to keep the troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant shut down . The poll also found that the residents don’t trust its majority owner and operator, Southern California Edison, to keep safety as its first priority at the nuke plant.

” A strong majority of Edison customers want to keep San Onofre shut down and almost half don’t trust Edison to put safety before profit,” environmental group Friends of the Earth reported on October 1.

Friends of the Earth (foe.org) commissioned David Binder Research to carry out the poll. The company talked to 700 registered voters in the counties San Onofre provides electricity to.

The results: “58% of respondents said they oppose reopening the plant…Only 32% said San Onofe should reopen,” Friends of the Earth reported.

By Elizabeth Batt / Digital Journal / October 1, 2012

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), says it is planning to protest outside of SeaWorld San Diego on Wednesday, following an horrific injury to one of the marine park’s killer whales.

PETA who has already called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (APHIS) to launch an investigation into the gruesome injury received by Nakai on Sept. 20, says it is now planning a protest Wednesday to urge the federal government to take action against the marine park.

Nakai, an 11-year-old orca at SeaWorld San Diego, had his lower jaw sheared off to the bone with an injury so severe said Washington DC-based writer Tim Zimmermann, that the detached piece “Was big enough and intact enough for SeaWorld to retrieve it from the bottom of the pool.”

Local waters have claimed the lives of two people recently – both victims were hunting lobsters. A fisherman’s body was pulled from the surf in Ocean Beach on Monday and a young lobster diver died around the Ventura Street Bridge in Mission Bay on Sunday night.

Edgar Paglumotan’s body was found by lifeguards around 4 pm Monday, October 1, in the surf. The 50-year old man had been lobster fishing with a friend in a sailboat near OB and Mission Beach. Reportedly, a large wave which the media called “rogue” hit their 20-foot boat, causing it to overturn.

Question is raised – is this our ‘Trayvon Martin’?

Nearly two hundred people attended the vigil for Valeria “Munique” Tachiquin Alvarado in Chula Vista Monday early evening. Family, friends, supporters and strangers – and the media – gathered at the intersection of Moss Street and Oaklawn Avenue – where she was shot to death by a plainclothes border patrol agent on Friday afternoon, September 28th, while in her car.

The 32 year old mother of 5 had been fatally killed during some kind of interaction with the agent. Reports of what happened differed wildly. And during the at times emotional vigil family members, including the young woman’s father, called for answers and justice.

Speaking first, Christian Ramirez of the American Friends Service Committee spoke about the evening being a sober one. He said the community vigil “was called by the family to remember her life and bear testimony to the tragedy that occurred 72 hours ago. They demand justice.”