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From Hockey Star To Homeless: Craig Miller Dies on Christmas Day In Ocean Beach

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By Vera Sanchez and Sunny Rey

Most people celebrate Christmas by unwrapping surprises, with the smell of coffee, the sound of giggles, and the warmth of a crowded house. But Dec. 25, 2015, is the day we found Craig Miller dead.

We were just two volunteers wanting to pass out sleeping bags; the season slump was to be uplifted in the streets of Ocean Beach. The organization, 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 As fate would have it, we received an outdated flyer with an old starting time, and consequently arrived well after the event was over.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Official Recognition of San Diego’s ‘Good Samaritans’

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By Mic Porte

San Diego hosts many people. We advertise our world famous beaches, attractions and weather to the world. We invite people to come. We pay fancy advertising campaigns on the billboards of Times Square in New York City at New Year’s.

The police, fire-rescue, lifeguards, Coast Guard, cannot patrol every inch of coastline, border, road, etc. It is a tribute to the Good Samaritans among us that there are not more tragedies along the coast, on the roads, and in other public places.   [Read more…]

No, You Are Automatically Disqualified: DACA Should Be a Gateway

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By Leobardo Aviles

As I was about to graduate I realized there was no future.

Bringing me into this country for a chance at a better life was my parent’s mistake.

Growing up without ever thinking about what could stop me from receiving further education was mine. Regardless if all my schooling was done here, I have to throw my opportunity out the window for someone else to catch it, all because I am undocumented.   [Read more…]

The Rainmaker, Charles Hatfield, and the Flood of 1916

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By Patricia Maxwell

Today’s residents of Chula Vista have much in common with citizens of a hundred years ago. Make that a thousand years or more. Southern California has always been an arid land, with cycles of drought, interspersed with wet years every now and again. In December of 1915, San Diego’s city fathers tackled the issue from a completely different angle. They hired a rainmaker!

The impetus for their decision was the unfilled Morena Reservoir in the mountains sixty miles east of San Diego. A rock-filled dam had been completed in 1912, but the reservoir had yet to be filled beyond a third of its capacity. Other reservoirs in the area shared the same problem. None were filled and the city was growing.

The rainmaker, Mr. Charles Hatfield, said “I will fill the Morena Reservoir to overflowing between now and next December 20, 1916, for the sum of $10,000, in default of which I ask no compensation.”   [Read more…]

Suburban Sprawl Continues Creep Across Desert

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By Shaun Gonzalez / Mojave Desert Blog

The revival of the housing market has renewed a perennial threat to desert wildlands – urban sprawl. Developers are considering plans for large new suburban developments across the southwest, years after such large developments mostly stalled when the housing industry began to in 2006. At a time when most of our efforts have been focused on protecting public lands from industrial-scale development, urban sprawl underscores the need for local efforts to protect open space under private ownership.

Along the Mojave River in California, the Tapestry project could result in the destruction of nearly 9 square miles of juniper woodland and chaparral habitat in the Summit Valley to make way for at least 16,196 homes. The area is popular for hiking, jogging, and mountain bike riding. During environmental surveys, biologists observed or detected western pond turtles, coastal horned lizards, bobcats, mule deer, mountain lion, the endangered Arroyo toad, and over 100 species of birds. The area also hosts many special status plant species, such as the San Bernardino Mountains owl’s-clover.   [Read more…]

Supreme Court Case Impacts Teachers, Public Employees

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By Lindsay Burningham / San Diego Education Association

As an elementary teacher I consider it a privilege to work with the students of San Diego. When students are engaged by educators within a climate of trust, we share in their joy when those “light bulb” moments happen and students are achieving at their full potential.

As the president of the San Diego Education Association, I have had the opportunity to expand my professional learning through school site visits throughout the city of San Diego. Irrespective of the amazing work I see accomplished by outstanding educators, paraprofessionals and administrators in those schools every day, I also see the effects of an economic system that has swung out of balance. Hardworking parents of our students are finding it more difficult to get by, even as an economic recovery has increased the fortunes of those at the very top of the economic class.

Now the Supreme Court is poised to hear a case that seeks to make it even worse for workers who want to stand together to have a voice in their workplace.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: The Future of Post-Bordernity

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The wall is the materialized representation of this idea of a border. In English people call it a “fence” and in the U.S. that fence means “defense”; something that in American minds brings protection. Interestingly enough you would have to ask them, “Protection from who or what?” And this same wall or barrier or fence means an “offense” to Mexicans.

—Norma Iglesias Prieto

By Perry Vasquez

The U.S./Mexico border is falling apart. Like Chipotle Swiss cheese, it is shot through with gaps, holes, lacunae, erasures, and stretches of emptiness. The border exists—but at times its existence seems to collapse beneath the weight of its own sovereignty.

How does the border both exist and not exist at the same time? How does it manage to appear in strategic locations and disappear in non-strategic ones? Why do we think of the border as having a fixed and permanent national identity instead of a contingent and temporary one?

Like every national myth, the U.S./Mexico border began life as a collective act of imagination.   [Read more…]

‘Benny Here’: A Tribute to Musician and Bandleader Benny Hollman 1940-2015

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By Connie Zuñiga

On December 12 2015, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Benny Hollman lost his years-long struggle with cancer, surrounded by family at his home in Mira Mesa.

A little over a week before Benny’s passing, I was at my neighbor Ronnie Stewart’s house for dinner. Ronnie is a drummer who knew Benny from back in the day and at one time played in Benny’s orchestra.

As I walked in the door Ronnie was on the phone talking to Benny. I was surprised because I knew Benny was gravely ill. When Ronnie passed the phone to me, I heard an extremely frail voice; I knew I would never speak with Benny again.

We spoke for a minute and I apologized for not following through on getting with him to document the history of Logan Height’s Latino musicians from the 20s through the 40s. There is a rich history there that needs to be documented for the Logan Heights Historical Society. Benny had an incredible wealth of information about these local musicians.
  [Read more…]

Honoring Dr. King at the All Peoples Celebration

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By Alliance San Diego

On Monday, January 18th, Alliance San Diego will host the All Peoples Celebration to honor the life and legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The event will bring together people from across San Diego to lift up Dr. King’s vision of a world where all people are treated with dignity and respect, a sentiment increasingly overshadowed by hate and violence in this era.

Dr. King believed all people are created equal and all are part of the human family. This fundamental belief is a core principle of Alliance San Diego and guides our work to mobilize for change so that all people can achieve their full potential in an environment of harmony, safety, equality, and justice. It is also the inspiration for the All Peoples Celebration, which recognizes our shared humanity and our shared responsibility to one another and to the world we live in.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Rain, Streets and Flooding Creeks in City Heights

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Urban development, environmental mitigation and quality of life in the time of climate change

By John Stump

It’s happened again, as predicted. The City of San Diego’s long troubled Wightman Street Park flooded on January 5 and was under three feet of water again! Neighboring houses were flooded again and may be ruined.

In the 1920s this area in what is now known as City Heights was an unincorporated area in the county of San Diego. It contained a small lake, dance hall and other rural amusements. The City of San Diego annexed the area and built a realigned University Avenue.   [Read more…]

Raquel Martinez, Female Bullfighter

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Steven Schoenherr / South Bay Compass

She was a petite blond who lived in Imperial Beach and graduated from Mar Vista High in 1967. She was also a bullfighter.

Raquel Martinez was 22 when she left her home at 729 Cypress Avenue in 1971 and faced her first bull in the Tijuana Cortijo. She was determined to become the first woman matador since Patricia McCormick and Bette Ford in the 1950s, and to become as famous as the great Conchita Cintrón in the 1940s.   [Read more…]

Friendship Park in 2015

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Making new meanings and memories through friendship

By Jill Holslin / Friends of Friendship Park

It has been a busy year for Friendship Park, the little park south of Imperial Beach where you can go to visit with people on the other side of the border wall in Tijuana. Friends of Friendship Park has continued with our mission this year: to maintain public access to the park on the border where friendships can blossom, and families separated by deportation, by mixed immigration status, and by the injustice of border militarization can come together and maintain family bonds.   [Read more…]

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