OB Rag

By Lois Lane

Each area of Ocean Beach has two Ocean Beach Planning Board members to represent them to the City of San Diego. These are your elected officials, even if you didn’t vote in the Planning Board election.

Because people may be appointed who live in another district (as a result of a vacancy), some reps move from one district to another. For example, Andrew Waltz represented District 1, but was recently elected to District 4.

Newly elected are Blake Herrschaft in District 3, Andrew Waltz in District 4, and Tom Gawronski in District 6. Yes, there are still some vacancies.

Here are your reps: …

by gulfgal98Follow / DailyKos /March 28, 2015

It has been over two years since the Occupy Movement was brutally destroyed by a coordinated national effort led by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Since that time, much documentation has been released under the Freedom of Information Act. Even though they are heavily redacted, these documents provide a frightening window into how far corporate America along with the federal, state, and local governments acting as their agents were willing to go to destroy a populist social movement like Occupy.

Despite all the documentation we have, there are still many out there who are in denial about these facts. After reading some recent comments that misrepresent what happened to the Occupy Movement, I decided to review how Occupy was so brutally squelched by Wall Street and corporate America using government forces as their agents acting upon their behalf.

Psst: Don’t call it Cali.

By Laura Beck / Cosmopolitan

Yes, the rules are a little different based on your exact location — California is a large and varied state — but these are some things that are true for all of us.

1. We don’t get seasonal moodiness. Because there are no seasons! Want to hit the beach in October? Great! That’s the perfect time to do it in San Francisco! (Just don’t forget a jacket, mittens, a scarf, and your wooliest hat.) (And maybe some rain boots, depending on the fog situation.)

2. Like, all the songs are written about us. All of them. Whether you’re Katy Perry, Too Short, or the Beach Boys, you’ve probably got a

Editor: We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Kowit, a well-known poet – and educator – from our area, a former OBcean and mainstay in Ocean Beach literary circles. In the 1990s Steve moved from OB out to East County.

In Steve’s honor, we publish below a piece he had to say about poetry making followed by a very fitting poem, “Last Will”.

Our online media partner, the San Diego Free Press, is celebrating National Poetry Month by publishing selections of works by San Diego poets, and Steve Kowit was one of those poets.

Steve Kowit at San Diego Writers, Ink 2014

By Steve Kowit

Poetry, when it is at its most ineffable, transports us to places we had no reason to believe language could take us. What is needed …

By Joan McCarter / Daily Kos

One of the 43 amendments passed by Senate Republicans in Thursday’s (3/26/15) vote-a-rama was a sop to extremist state legislatures in the west who have been pushing states’ rights bills that would allow the states to sell off the federal public lands within their borders. That’s right, congressional Republicans—federal representatives—want to allow states to seize and sell off the nation’s heritage.

Video: The San Diego March for Ayotzinapa

By Horacio Jones / San Diego Free Press

When I heard that the families of the “normalistas” were coming to San Diego I was keen to do a story on their caravan. Ever since I heard about the kidnappings I felt compelled to do whatever I could to support their cause against the “narcos” and the Mexican government.

I feel that the only way things will change in Mexico is through the grassroots efforts of people like these who are tired and disgusted with the current state of Mexican politics.

by Big Island Now Staff

A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service wrongly approved U.S. Navy training exercises in the Pacific Ocean that would cause widespread harm to whales, dolphins, other marine mammals, and endangered sea turtles.

The Navy’s planned exercises involved the use of explosives, sonar, and vessel strikes over a five-year period, causing an estimated 9.6 million instances of harm to ocean mammals and other marine life.

It was concluded that the training exercises would impact millions of marine animals with injury, death, and disrupted essential habits like mating, rest, and communication.

Editor: Back in March, NASA scientist Jay Famiglietti wrote an op-ed piece published in the LA Times, and the paper entitled it “California has about one year of water left. Will you ration now?” Is that really true?

By Andrew Freedman / Mashable / April 2, 2015

California Governor Jerry Brown announced his state’s first-ever mandatory statewide water restrictions on Wednesday, seeking to curb water use by at least 25%.

While the governor cited a record low snowpack and below average reservoirs in the midst of a four-year drought as the reasons for the move, one particular scientist’s actions may have had something to do with the restrictions.

Climate researcher Jay Famiglietti has pioneered the use of a NASA satellite system to track changes in water use worldwide. His studies have shown that the Central Valley region of California, which is one of the most productive regions for growing fruits and vegetables in the U.S., is sinking by up to a foot a year as farmers tap underground aquifers in an increasingly desperate search for irrigation water.

This has gotta be the coolest house in all of OB.

There’s no other house like it. Not along the cliffs like this.

It’s at the end of Pescadera Street and has been there for decades, in various states of repairs. Now, it looks habitable.

Lena Horne was the first black woman to get a contract with a major Hollywood Studio

By John Lawrence

Born into a black bourgeoisie family in 1917, Lena Horne was signed up in the NAACP by her grandmother, Cora Calhoun Horne, a college graduate, at the age of two. The Hornes owned a four-story residence in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn.

The distinguished Horne family included teachers, activists and a Harlem Renaissance poet. Lena’s uncle became dean of a black college.

Here is a must see! It’s a 1990 video about Ocean Beach, just discovered in Paul Avery’s VHS archives. It’s all about why some people don’t like OB. It also contains wonderful – yet grainy – video footage from the summer of 1970 battle against the jetty that the city wanted to build.

The vid also displays some of the attitudes which you, dear reader, will find currently expressed in today’s social media about OB.

By Ernie McCray

I look around me,
breathing in deeply
as I reflect on the totality
of what I see.
Before me, a man lays sleeping
on a downtown street
that jumps with a crisp
four/four time Hip-Hop beat,
bouncing from an upbeat retreat,
where folks hang out,
chillaxed to the max
as it’s the “Thank God it’s Friday,”