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For Susan L. Taylor: The Green Fuse Drives the Flower

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The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.

Dylan Thomas

Susan Taylor began writing columns about gardening for the San Diego Free Press in February of 2014. The biography that she provided to append to the end of her articles is quintessential Susan—direct, spirited and humorous. It deftly conveys details of an intriguing past, establishes the commitments of her heart and intellect and reflects her whimsical optimism about the future.

Susan L. Taylor, a San Diego native daughter, digs politics, urban agriculture, dogs and local beaches. Forever grad student of Latin America history, she speaks Spanish, Portuguese and teen-speak to the two boys still at home. Supports guerrilla, community and home gardening. Dreams of a beachhead along the Baja California coast and hopes that the grapes she grows will someday taste like red wine. Susan supports the restoration of Chollas Creek and is still a natural blonde.

Susan wrote enthusiastically received gardening columns for San Diego Free Press that drew upon her expertise as a certified Master Gardener in the county.  Her columns were anything but generic in content or tone, which is to say that they were pure Susan. Her articles were peppered with exclamation points and we left most of them in because they so perfectly expressed her perpetual wonder and delight with the vegetative world. “Remember, the best day to plant a tree was twenty years ago, and the second best day is today!”   [Read more…]

Celebrate Maria Garcia Day in San Diego!

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San Diego Free Press writer, educator, activist and historian Maria Garcia will be recognized for her positive contributions to the Latina(o) community on Tuesday, December 5. District 8 Councilmember David Alvarez invites Maria’s readers, supporters and friends to this special event.

Maria was recently recognized by The San Diego Union-Tribune which selected the retired school-principal and longtime Chicana activist as a Latino Champion. She received a prestigious Governor’s Historic Preservation Award for her book “La Neighbor.” On the same day that she received the Governor’s Award in Sacramento, she flew back to San Diego just in time to receive the Citizen of the Year Award from the San Diego Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, the professional educational honor association.   [Read more…]

Accolades for Maria Garcia, ‘La Neighbor’

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“I always knew that knowledge could not be taken away.”

Over the course of one extraordinary week Maria Garcia was recognized for her work in historical preservation and documentation in Sacramento and as a Latino Champion and as Citizen of the Year here in San Diego. Maria is well known to San Diego Free Press readers for her award winning weekly series “The History of Neighborhood House in San Diego.”

Maria turned that series of stories about the lives of a forgotten and overlooked community into the book “La Neighbor: A Settlement House in Logan Heights.” By showing how residents lived their lives — worked, voted, raised their families — she firmly established them, Neighborhood House and Logan Heights in the history of San Diego.

Maria’s contributions have not gone unnoticed. The San Diego Union-Tribune selected the retired school-principal and longtime Chicana activist as a Latino Champion. She received a prestigious Governor’s Historic Preservation Award for “La Neighbor.” On the same day that she received the Governor’s Award in Sacramento, she flew back to San Diego just in time to receive the Citizen of the Year Award from the San Diego Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, the professional educational honor association.   [Read more…]

After Charlottesville: Swift Resistance

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The response to Trump’s total moral failure to reckon with what happened in Charlottesville last Saturday prompted an immediate response from citizens all over the country. Over 700 rallies and marches were held in the aftermath, including here in San Diego.

There has been resistance from elected officials and candidates; CEOs; the faith based community; talk show hosts and citizens. Many, many citizens.

The Republican Party stands alone–spineless, calculating and morally bankrupt in their unwillingness to call out and cut off Trump.   [Read more…]

Need for Police Accountability and Transparency After La Jolla Shooting

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“It is possible to be in debt, to be lovelorn, and to be racist. They are not mutually exclusive.”

The recent shooting rampage at the La Jolla Crossroads apartment complex in University City left one person dead and seven persons wounded. This is indisputable.

We also know that the dead victim and wounded were all African Americans and the shooter, who was subsequently shot by the police, was white.

Local news coverage of the event has unsurprisingly focused on the possible motives for San Diego’s scene of American Carnage. While shooter Peter Selis’ troubled financial history and recent break up with his girl friend appear to provide reasonable motivations, the possibility of racial animus has become a contentious issue.
  [Read more…]

Unleashing the Howl: When the ACLU Defended Allen Ginsberg

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“Sixty years ago, ACLU of Northern California staff attorney Al Bendich defended City Lights Books publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was accused of obscenity for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl.

Over 500 freshly-printed copies of Howl and Other Poems were seized by the government, rather than allowed to exist as thought-provoking literature. The trial against City Lights Books made its way to the California State Superior Court in 1957, where Judge Clayton Horn ruled in favor of Ferlinghetti and the ACLU.”   [Read more…]

The Science of San Diego Mastodon Bones, Time and Human Habitation

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Who knew that the Cerutti Mastodon site along SR54 in San Diego may be “the oldest in situ, well-documented archaeological site in North America and, as such, substantially revises the timing of arrival of Homo into the Americas”? And what does that actually mean?

San Diego has been a rich source of paleontological discoveries. A 300,000 year old mammoth was excavated during the construction of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in downtown San Diego. Additional excavation ten feet below the skull and tusks of the mammoth revealed the 500,000 year old skeleton of a California Gray Whale.

The significance of these two sites are quite different. The mastodon site is about much more than the animal life in the region one hundred and thirty thousand years ago.   [Read more…]

A Freeway Runs Through It: A City Heights-Barrio Logan Conversation

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Resistance, Vision and Community

Chicano Park exists in Barrio Logan because of the construction of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge and the loss of property and displacement of lives that it caused. The community responded in a powerful, unique way. Residents couldn’t stop the construction, but they did lay claim to the land beneath the immense concrete pillars that enabled travelers above to make their way across the Coronado Bridge, oblivious to the transformation occurring below them. The land that was being readied for a California Highway Patrol substation was re-claimed as a long promised park. The reclamation began as a twelve day occupation that involved hundreds of people.

City Heights was likewise changed forever when eight city blocks along 40th Street- people’s homes and businesses–were scoured from the face of the earth in the early 1990’s to make way for the last connecting link of I-15, which extends from Canada to Mexico. City Heights would become a scorched earth community divided by an enormous ditch in keeping with Caltrans signature construction style.   [Read more…]

Volunteers Raise High the Roof Beams for Emergency, Very Affordable Housing in San Diego

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Amikas Emergency Housing Expo

The super bloom of wild flowers in the most inhospitable of places–the Anza Borrego desert– has captured the attention of San Diegans, who are flocking to get a glimpse of this short lived phenomenon.

Closer to home, an equally remarkable blossoming takes the form of the cluster of cabins that has sprung up like wild flowers at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in North Park. San Diego has been the most inhospitable of places for enacting solutions to our growing humanitarian crisis of homelessness. Volunteer activists from Amikas have stepped into the leadership vacuum, displaying what can be done to address the immediate housing needs of the most vulnerable among us.

The demonstration project that volunteers designed and are building on the church site represent one low cost, practical approach to providing bridge housing by way of small communities with safe sleeping cabins.   [Read more…]

So-Called President Trump: The Fine Art of Name Calling

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What first comes to mind when you think about the presidential contenders in the primary and general election? Do you recall Little Marco? Low Energy Jeb? Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted? Trump had a knack for applying a descriptive label that successfully branded his opponent and stuck throughout the campaign.

The description was used repetitively in debates, at Trump rallies, in tweets and interviews. The press amplified them through their coverage of Trump.

It is remarkable that Trump himself has eluded a descriptive label that conjures up his narcissism, fascist bent, recklessness and corruption or the swirling cloud of illegitimacy surrounding his presidency.   [Read more…]

Trump’s Long Shadow Falls on San Diego Immigrants, Refugees, Muslims

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From City Heights Town Hall to Airport Protest

“Tell me what democracy looks like!”

“This is what democracy looks like!”

The chant ran up and down the whole length of Terminal 2 of San Diego’s Lindbergh Airport, up and down the opposite side of the terminal and could be heard on the second floor walkway. Three lines of cars ran between the two and those cars honked their horns while passengers waved flags and held signs outside of the windows.

An estimated 2,000 of us put our bodies on the public sidewalks of the airport to protest the fear and chaos engendered by Trump’s recent executive order restricting immigration from seven Muslim countries.   [Read more…]

Who Are You Going to Believe? Trump, Truth, Citizens and the Press

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The unveiling of the Ministry of Truth

There are 1,457 days left in the Trump presidency, assuming that he doesn’t get bored and quit, is impeached or that the skies rain glass upon us all.

Trump’s inaugural address “(Liberal) Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” made it clear that he is only interested in his adoring base–the 46% of the voting public who narrowly installed him in the White House. The strategy among his handlers is clearly to let Trump be Trump while they roll up their sleeves and dismantle our democratic institutions.

The massive Women’s March in Washington on the first day of the Trump presidency was successful on many levels, not the least of which is that it got under Trump’s thin skin–bigly. The half million or so people who showed up were not Trump’s adoring base.   [Read more…]

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