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The State of the State: Gov. Brown is Okay, Unless You’re Republican

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The high season is upon us, the time of year when elected officials offer addresses on how our state is faring — overviews of California and its local governments. Mayor Faulconer will host his smile-a-thon at the Balboa Theater tonight… All together now: Everything is beautiful….

Gov. Jerry Brown will take his turn at the podium next Thursday (Jan 21st). It’s likely he’ll give us all The Lecture on fiscal prudence and run through a laundry list of unfinished projects: funding gaps for Medi-Cal, transportation infrastructure maintenance, and further attention to climate change.

In advance of Gov. Brown’s speech, two major polling outfits have released data purporting to show the mood of the people. Depending on who’s asking, Gov. Brown is either working against the will of the people or has the vision to lead the state into the future.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: Livin’ La Vida Logan

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Barrio Logan is one of the oldest neighborhoods in San Diego. It used to be one whole community called Logan Heights, named after congressman John A. Logan, but the creation of the Interstate 5 freeway that bisected the neighborhood changed that. Then the building of the San Diego–Coronado Bridge changed it again. Thousands were displaced from building the freeway and the bridge. Now Barrio Logan encompasses a relatively small patch of land sandwiched between the San Diego Bay and the I-5 freeway and north of National City and south of San Diego’s East Village.

Fewer than 5,000 people inhabit my barrio. Thousands more come during the day to work here in the shipyards, the Port of San Diego and the other companies that line the bay side of Barrio Logan. Of those 5,000 barrio denizens about 85% of them are non-white, most of which are of Mexican descent. But things are changing.   [Read more…]

Is It Time to Put Down the Bacon?

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Processed meat may cause cancer, but your personal risk is probably low.

By Jill Richardson / OtherWords

By now you’ve probably heard the sobering news: Red meat may cause cancer. And bacon and other popular processed meats definitely do, the World Health Organization says.

Does that mean we all need to quit eating processed meats — no pun intended — cold turkey?

For nutrition-obsessed dorks like me, this pronouncement wasn’t news: Bacon’s been suspect for decades. Yet I still occasionally eat the stuff, and I have a weakness for a particular variety of overpriced salami sold at Whole Foods. (It’s great for camping trips, because it stays good outside the fridge.)   [Read more…]

Don’t Let Them Blind You With Their Science

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By  / OtherWords

When I first began researching agriculture, I had no idea how organic farming worked. I saw it as a somewhat backward yet non-toxic and desirable way to grow food.

Organic farmers didn’t use fertilizer, I figured, so maybe the plants would be smaller. And they didn’t use pesticides, so I’d have to settle for some damage to my food — and I’d pay more for the privilege.

As for the people who thought organic agriculture produced better, healthier food than conventional farming, I figured they were nuts. That sounded like magical thinking to me. Did organic farmers grow food using fairies and rainbows?   [Read more…]

Stuff You May Not Have Known About Halloween

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By Susan Grigsby  / Daily Kos

Of the differing schools of thought on the origins of Halloween, I prefer the one that roots it in ancient Celtic tradition. And since no one seems to know for sure, why not? According to the American Folklife Center, Halloween originated with the ancient pre-Christian Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The festival observed at this time was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween). It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year. The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than any other time of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, because at Samhain the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld. People gathered to sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. They also lit bonfires in honor of the dead, to aid them on their journey, and to keep them away from the living. On that day all manner of beings were abroad: ghosts, fairies, and demons–all part of the dark and dread.

As the Catholic Church moved into the British Isles, the Celtic New Year holiday was pre-empted to honor All Saints and Martyrs (the Hallowed), especially those who did not have a specific date set aside for them. Since the Celtic festival continued unabated, the Church then introduced All Souls day wherein prayers for the dead were said on the following day, November 2.   [Read more…]

Turista Libre Teams Up With Tijuana Photography Festival

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Turista Libre tour of Tijuana Photo Festival captures border town’s moment of change

By George Howell

What better way to get to a photography festival than to sit in an old school bus with the artist-organizers and a handful of curious Americans, listening to booming dance music while the eastern hinterlands of Tijuana whiz past your window?

On Saturday, October 3rd, I hopped on board the bus tour co-sponsored by Turista Libre, the Tijuana-based tour operator, and the coordinating team of the modest, but highly ambitious First International Festival of Photography Tijuana (FiFT). As artist Rebecca Goldschmidt told me, “We don’t just want to take people to the sites where the festival events are taking place. We want a dialogue.”   [Read more…]

Planning My Garden for an El Niño Winter

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By Jeeni Criscenzo

Now that my knee is healing, and the weather is cooling off a bit, my attention is turning back to my garden. Knee problems aside, the oppressive heat of the past two months pretty much silenced the siren call of my garden. Just dragging my sweaty self out to feed the chickens was my quota of physical exertion for the day. Some evenings didn’t even cool enough to inspire my meditative stroll through the succulent labyrinth.

Resigned that my vegetable garden this summer was a total disaster, I had removed all of the fencing that kept the chickens out of my raised beds. So while I wasn’t working, the chickens were.   [Read more…]

The Fight Against GMOs and Toxic Food

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While Other Countries Ban GMOs, US Congress Endorses Them

By John Lawrence

Scotland has banned genetically modified organisms (GMOs) within its country. “Scotland is known around the world for our beautiful natural environment—and banning growing genetically modified crops will protect and further enhance our clean, green status,” said rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead. Here in the US the fight is just for the right to know that a food product should be labeled as GMO, and that’s not going so well.

Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1599, the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015. This is BS, of course, since the bill’s real purpose is to preempt the rights of state and local governments to pass laws requiring the mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), to overturn GMO labeling laws already in place in several states, and to prevent the passage of any federal mandatory GMO labeling law in the future. So there is no free speech insofar as knowing what’s in something we are eating is concerned. The law’s attempt is to suppress truth in labeling.

GMOs were developed primarily to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup so that Roundup could be sprayed directly on crops and only the weeds would die. So whether or not GMO corn and soybeans are good or bad for you, the presence of poison sprayed on them can’t be too good for human consumers when they eat such crops. Especially crops such as grapes and apples which have very thin skins and are vulnerable to soaking up the herbicides and pesticides sprayed on them.   [Read more…]

Labor Day and the Cycle of Change in the Garden

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By Susan Taylor

Traditionally Labor Day weekend is the harbinger of fall in much of our nation. The eastern states put away their garden furniture, barbeques, and lawn mowers and locate storm windows and heavier jackets. Here in the sunny southern California clime, we expect at least another six weeks of warm weather, beach parties and more clear, warm days and nights. In San Diego, most would agree that the August heat was epic for people and gardens alike and maybe summer has just begun!

I am a fickle home gardener and confess I gave up on my whole tomato crop, picked as many as I could and ripped the rest out.   [Read more…]

San Diego Brewery May Be ‘Selling Out’. Does It Matter?

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By John P. Anderson

San Diego County has a large beer industry, there are currently more than 110 active breweries. Along with high numbers, San Diego has earned a reputation as a leader in the craft beer industry. Many would rank it as the top craft beer city/region in the United States – whether it is the top dog or in the top five isn’t especially important. It’s a leader however you measure – top ranked beers, top ranked breweries, number of breweries, or gallons produced annually.

So InBev and MillerCoors come to town and write a check with a bunch of zeroes, hope someone takes the offer, and then do their best to make sure that as few people as possible know that a big brewery now owns the “little guy”. So does it matter if a brewery is owned by a person in your neighborhood or a large corporation like InBev? For many it does.   [Read more…]

Lazy Fare in the Garden: Just Let It Be

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By Jeeni Criscenzo

Ever since I read the book Noah’s Garden by Sara Stein, I’ve taken a more laissez-faire attitude toward gardening. While I haven’t let my garden return back to its pre-human-intervention state, I’ve stopped being so controlling about what gets to grow where.

One of the best features of the home we rent is the big flat, unshaded yard overlooking the Tecolote Canyon. While the soil needed a lot of amending, it’s otherwise a perfect place for a vegetable garden. The 5-foot cinder block wall isn’t pretty, but it’s kept the coyotes out (so far)–the other critters – not so much.

I noticed this morning that something (most likely a squirrel) had polished off every leaf on my zucchinis, cucumbers and sweet potatoes. All of that in one night! They must have had a helluva full-moon bash! Just the day before, those plants were thriving in big plastic gopher-proof containers. But apparently they were just a tub-o-fun for squirrels.   [Read more…]

Anti-LGBT Strategies a Big Part of Skyline Church’s ‘Future Conference’

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By Doug Porter

Media Matters for America has posted an insiders account of presentations by the country’s most prominent anti-LGBT activists during a recent conference at San Diego’s Skyline Church.

Organized by Skyline Pastor Jim Garlow, the 2015 Future Conference was called in response to “the thorniest and most challenging issues in the current cultural landscape.”

While the four day gathering featured presentations covering a range of issues, the alleged rise of Christian persecution stemming from the growing acceptance of LGBT people was the unifying theme.   [Read more…]

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