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Archives for July 2012

A Weekend of Protests Over TPP Trade Negotiations Set

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The Coalition to STOP TPP continues its week of actions with 2 more conference sessions (Friday evening and Saturday late afternoon), a rally at noon on Friday and a major “Pot’s and Pans” March on Saturday.

Friday, July 6, 12:00 noon rally at Hilton Bayfront
Friday, July 6, 6:30 – 8:30 pm • Food Freedom or NAFTA on Steroids Peace Resource Center: 3850 Westgate Place, San Diego, CA

July 7, Saturday, 11 am – March with Pots and Pans Against TPP! March leaves Civic Center at 11 am
Saturday, July 7, 3:00 – 5:00 pm People’s Conference: A Better World Is Possible! Peace Resource Center: 3850 Westgate Place, San Diego, CA   [Read more…]

You may be dysfunctional, but you’re still my fellow American…

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Musings on the Fourth of July

By Bill Guy
Neighbors invite us newbies to the annual cul-de-sac Independence Day party. Pot luck in the park. Bring your lawn chairs, celebrate the holiday. Get to know your neighbors better. Quite a mix. Mostly retired folk or those countin’ it down. One younger couple with two grade school boys and a gorgeous little girl with mocha skin, topaz eyes and Shirley Temple curls. Two couples obviously long-time SoCal denizens. Others sporting tans, but still betraying back-east accents. Expatriate Brits, Asians, Okies via Massachusetts and Tennessee, and an Illini married to an Islander. Maybe a Hispanic hombre, but then again, he might be an Italian uomo.

Food was great. Traditional favorites like hot dogs, potato salad, deviled eggs. But also tasty dishes from newcomers’ kitchens cooking other cultures. Scotch Eggs, Asian noodles, salsa. Cheesecake with blueberries and strawberries, peach cobbler, chocolate covered strawberries soaked all night in vodka. Later, we could watch the city’s fireworks from our back yards.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – League of Women Voters Stymied by UT-SD’s “Two Bumper Stickers and a Tweet” Letter Policy

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July 6, 2012—The miniaturization of the UT-SD letters to the editor. Yesterday we heard from some friends associated with the League of Women Voters who were aghast because our local daily had rejected their letter to the editor due to its length. Meh, we said at first, you ought to be able to express yourself in 250 words or less (which used to be the standard at the paper) so there’s room for more letters. Then we learned that UT-SD’s rules have changed—letters to the editor are now limited to 125 words. Here’s the UT’s rejection letter:

We limit letters for print publication to 125 words. If you would like to shorten your letter and resubmit it to letters@utsandiego.com it will be considered for publication. We will retain your original for possible posting online.

 Thank you for taking the time to submit your comments

 Joe Taylor | Letters Editor 

 As one of our sources said, “that’s two bumper stickers and a tweet”. Of course, when our contacts started counting the number of words in yesterday’s letters, they came up with three missives that exceeded that limit, with 128, 142, and 157 words respectively. So, as a public service, we’re going to publish the original letter in its entirety here today. The public deserves to hear more than UT publisher Doug Manchester’s vision for our city.   [Read more…]

Labor Calls Out Scheme to Sabotage Living Wage Ordinance

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By Nadin Abbott
July 5, 2012 (San Diego)– When the San Diego City Council spun off the Convention Center to the San Diego Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CONVIS), labor leaders feared that CONVIS would try to maximize profits by getting around provisions such as the living wage ordinance. These fears came to fruition when item 5:8 of the contract “struck out the provision that SDCVB shall comply with the City of San Diego Living Wage ordinance.”

According to Lorena Gonzales, Secretary-Treasurer/CEO of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, “we must have a discussion on quality of life.” Gonzales also emphasized that workers on minimum wage are subsidized by the rest of us, since we have to pay for food stamps, section eight housing and Emergency Room visits, and turn over is higher as well.

What we need, Gonzales added, “are good jobs for all San Diegans.”   [Read more…]

Field of View: A Marshmallow Fight on the Fourth of July

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Thousands congregated in Ocean Beach for a colorful fireworks show – even more so considering the malfunctioning mishap Downtown – and the decades-long traditional marshmallow fight. Young couples, teens, older folks and families all took part, armed either with their own bags of marshmallows (sold for $3.99 or less from various prepared vendors along Newport Avenue) or scooping up whatever fallen artillery they could find. The warfare didn’t wait until the fireworks finale, though things heated up dramatically afterward.

The event is a wonderful thing to have so close to home. One significant downside was the amount of trash – especially the plastic – that was left on the beach. If something could be done about that, this would the harmless, uniquely OBcean experience it was meant to be.   [Read more…]

Corrupted File Miscues San Diego Bay Fireworks

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By Nadin Abbott

July 5, 2012 (San Diego)– If like most of us in the coast you heard a loud rumbling that lasted for about thirty seconds, last night, you were not alone. Nor was it your imagination. The fire works had a glitch. The good news is, nobody got hurt.

According to August Santori, the person in charge of the show last night, they suspect they had a corrupted file in the firing cue sequence. Hence the four barges and the land site on Imperial Beach all fired their mortars in thirty seconds. He also explained that this was a weird event and that it was unexpected. They had another twenty nine shows around the nation, and they all went off perfectly. His company runs three hundred shows a year, and their goal is to achieve a 100% rate of success.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — UT- San Diego Recycles Two Week Old Story on Front Page

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July 5, 2012- The story on the front page of today’s daily newspaper looked familiar. So familiar, in fact, that I initially thought the paper had lifted it—at least in part—from some other local source, possibly the Reader or KPBS. The article told the tale of an ascendant duo of mystery writers, Michele Scott and Andrew E. Kaufman, who recently discovered quite by accident that they lived within a quarter mile of each other in Jamul and have now decided to collaborate on a book. The lede to the story was so memorable (“Fresh from the freaky-but-true files:…) that I went ahead and searched the web, thinking surely there must be some kind of plagiarism going on. But that turned out not to be the case. What I discovered was that the story was originally published in the UT-SD on June 19th.  In other words, the paper was re-cycling the news. That’s one way to save money, I guess. UPDATE The UT has told Poynter.org that the story was only published online June 19th. That still doesn’t explain away recycling a two plus week old story and putting it on the front page of your print edition. It’s called a NEWSpaper, not a recycling bin for online features.   [Read more…]

Ten Reasons the San Diego Planning Commission Should Save Mission Trails Park on July 19th

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Editor: On July 19th, the full San Diego Planning Commission will vote on whether to deny an amendment to Open Space land to accommodate a power plant being proposed very close to Mission Trails Regional Park. A local citizen – Stephen Goldfarb – sent a letter to the Planning Commission and some elected officials outlining ten reasons to deny the amendment. The content of that letter is as follows:

Preface. I was in the audience at the Planning Commission June 28, 2012 meeting. I would like to comment on several matters. I am also writing in anticipation of the July 19, 2012 Planning Commission meeting when a vote will be completed as to denying implementation of an amendment to zone land dedicated to Open Space conservation to heavy industrial use to accommodate a power plant.

It is unclear at this time whether only the two Commissioners who were not present at the June 28 meeting will vote, or whether all Commissioners may vote anew.

Introduction. The issue of denying the applicant initiation of an amendment to install a large power plant on environmentally conserved East Elliott land is unusual for several reasons.   [Read more…]

“Go Pee Pee for Daddy” and Other Tales of the Dog

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San Diego seems to be in love with dogs. We have dog parks for big dogs and dog parks for small dogs. Dog owners, complete strangers to each other, stand on street corners in North Park with their pets and discuss the details of life with a shar pei or bichon frise while said animals enthusiastically explore each others nether portions. One acquaintance in Bankers Hill launched into a discourse on her mastiff’s lineage when I innocently asked, “Tell me something about your dog!” Perhaps I am only imagining that the very long account stretched back to the signing of the Magna Carta.

Here on my street in City Heights we only have two kinds of dogs- big dogs and little yippi dogs. And then there are the Chihuahuas which are more attitude than dog. They act as if they are really big dogs trapped by some cruel cosmic joke in the wrong size fur package. The little yippi dogs come in two styles– white fluffy and wiener. The fact that the little guys have won the popularity contest here is a subtle yet significant shift from the past.   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: The Increasing Desire for Male Birth Control

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Men should have an option beyond condoms and vasectomy.

By Irin Carmon / Salon/ Originally published June 14, 2012

Lenny Smalls, whose Facebook page says he lives in Chicago and works as a transportation analyst, is very interested in long-acting, reversible male contraception. According to his posts on a fan page for one form being tested — known as RISUG or Vasalgel — Smalls is sufficiently frustrated by the pace of such drugs coming to the U.S. market to have begun personally testing an Indonesian herbal product called gandarusa.

“I plan to become the guinea pig and test this products effect on myself and my sperm,” he wrote recently. “I will take 1 pill daily and record how I feel everyday. After 30 days, I will see my doctor and have my sperm tested to see if it was effected by the supplement.” Earlier this week, Smalls’ plan ran into a hitch when the first doctor he saw refused to cooperate. (Smalls did not respond to interview requests, though he did agree to friend this reporter on Facebook.)

  [Read more…]

Bitch Session

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

Warning for the faint of heart: Adult language ahead.

We were a small group, three women and three men, assembled at a coffeehouse last week to talk about a business venture. We were mostly strangers to each other, but for the meeting’s host. Still, the inevitable quests to establish credibility were civil and benign.

Except that, in the course of our discussion about media targeting females, one of the folks pointed out that it would be very important to prevent our programming from turning into bitch sessions.

Yep, “bitch sessions,” and, alas, others concurred with the advice.

It was a noticeably dicey choice of terms in our particular context, and a perfectly illustrative example of the ingrained prejudice women continue to experience in everything from our public institutions to our conversational English to our graffiti.
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The Number 7 Bus

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The number 7 bus is
The Tower of Babel turned on its side
The Tower of Babble with wheels
It’s articulated in the middle
For maneuvering corners
Although most of the maneuvering
Happens on the inside
& it’s not easy

The number 7 bus stops on every corner
Picks up everybody, everybody being
The passenger who searches her purse his pockets her bags
For the correct change
& comes up a quarter short
The elderly white woman struggling up the steps
Her shopping cart half -filled with her Social Security check’s munificence
Twelve rolls of generic toilet paper
Single ply   [Read more…]

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