OB Rag

By Vera Sanchez and Sunny Rey

December 25th, 2015 is the day we found Craig Miller dead. Most people celebrate Christmas by unwrapping surprises, with the smell of coffee, the sound of giggles, and the warmth of a crowded house. We were just two volunteers wanting to pass out sleeping bags; the season slump was to be uplifted in the streets of Ocean Beach.

An organization, The Urban Street Angels, had a goal of reaching 800 local homeless in the community by gifting them with newly donated sleeping bags. As fate would have it, we received an outdated flyer with an old starting time of the event, consequently arriving two hours late to an event that had longed past.

Debate Continues on Whether SeaWorld Can Built Hotel on its Present Site

By B. Ross

The area for the old, Mission Bay landfill that CK cites, in the article written to refute the OB Rag’s estimate of its area, is not accurate. Besides, the estimates for the size of the landfill are based on aerial photographs from that era. The City destroyed the majority of the records related to the landfill, which makes it impossible to prove either analysis correct. The study of the dump site was undertaken in 2005, so why point to 2002 data?

The Reader, San Diego UT and other sources in 2006 showed an area that is bigger than what CK shows and smaller than the map from the OB Rag story.

2016 marks the 100th anniversary of 1916’s Ireland Easter Rising.

The following article originally appeared in the Fall 1985 issue of “the whole damn pie shop.” : San Diego’s quarterly of Alternative Opinion.

Portrait of an Irish Republican

By Michael Steinberg

“Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations“–Padraic Pearce, one of the leader’s of the 1916 Easter Rising executed by the British.

Ireland, August, 1985–Julie Doherty has just turned 23. She lives in Derry, a city of 50,000 in the British occupied north of Ireland. She is blessed with a bright face and jaunty personality that few would call less that beautiful. But she is cursed with a harsh existence and lives constantly in the shadow of death.

Here is the Green Activist calendar for January 2016 – taken from the monthly OB Green Center Calendar:

In Ocean Beach

January 21 Thursday OB Historical Society: “OB’s History of Volunteerism”
at the P.L. United Methodist Church, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.

Join us Jan. 21 as Claudia Jack presents “OB’s History of VOLUNTEERISM”. The many organizations and volunteers are what has helped make OB special… from it’s parade, beach clean-ups, planning board, Friends of the Library, and many more.!

By Jim Miller

Just before the New Year I highlighted Project Censored’s pick for the most underreported story of 2015—the fact that 2016 will be when the top 1% will control half of the world’s wealth).

In that same column I focused on two other largely ignored stories that broke subsequent to Project Censored’s annual report that also underline the perils of domestic and international economic inequality.

A wooden box is not a home…but…

Originally posted at San Diego Free Press on January 7, 2016.

By Jeeni Criscenzo

Part three of the quartet of storms pounding San Diego is in full force as I sit here at my computer. The alert goes off on my phone signaling a flash flood warning. The shade cloth over my neighbor’s garden has disengaged itself from two of the poles securing it to earth and is preparing for takeoff.

Peering out the rain-whipped, sliding-glass doors that safely separate me from the deluge outside on my patio,

This is a review of a novel by Elizabeth Marro

The title of this article is truer than the reader knows.

I first met Elizabeth Marro – “Betsy” – while we were walking our dogs down the streets of Ocean Beach. As dog owners are wont to do, we began talking and I found out that she was an author; was aware of some of my articles for the OB Rag.

She told me she was writing a book, and I offered to read it for her when she was finished with it. It wasn’t long after that that she sent me her draft, and I loved it. I told her that when it was ready for publication to let me know and I’d do a review of it for her and was anxious to see if she had made any changes.

Christmas 2015 Notable for Extreme Weather Throughout the US

By John Lawrence

Record high temperatures on Christmas day, as much as 30 degrees F above normal, were experienced up and down the eastern portion of the US. At the same time, tornadoes destroyed homes and lives in the nation’s midsection and south.

December 2015 saw more than 2,600 record high temperatures; major metropolitan areas in the Northeast saw some of the warmest Christmas Eves and Days on record.

The author surveying the devastation of Pinyon-Juniper deforestation (Photo: Max Wilbert)

By Will Falk / San Diego Free Press

Once I recovered from the shock I experienced witnessing the carnage produced by a Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) so-called “pinyon-juniper treatment project” just south of Spruce Mountain in Nevada, all I wanted was the destruction to stop. In order to stop the destruction, we have to ask the question: “Why are they doing this?”

Reader Allissa Rosa sent these polished photos of Abbott Street in Ocean Beach flooding at sunset yesterday, Tuesday, January 5th.