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The Starting Line – Food Fight! Farm Bill Leaves People Hungry, Animals Hurting

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July 16, 2012 –The House Agriculture Committee approved legislation late last week that will cut $35 billion from the federal food and nutrition budget, about $16.5 billion of which come from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — more commonly known as SNAP or food stamps. The cuts work by eliminating “categorical eligibility,” which provides assistance to families whose assets or income put them slightly above the technical line for SNAP eligibility. Repealing categorical eligibility means that between two and three million Americans will lose access to food stamps and roughly 280,000 children will drop out of their automatic enrollment in the free lunch program at school. SNAP assistance saved five million American from poverty in 2010 and halved the number of children in poverty in 2011.

Bowing to pressure from agribusiness combines, the House Agriculture Committee also approved an amendment that will deny states the ability to regulate any farm product, overturning animal welfare, food safety and environmental laws related to any farm product in all 50 states. The midnight vote, at the end of a marathon debate on the five year agriculture measure, would block California’s ban on the sale and production of foie gras, and a voter approved measure requiring that caged veal calves, breeding sows and laying chickens should be able to stand up, lie down, turn around and freely extend their limbs. Also gone will be state laws that limit pesticide use on fruits and vegetables.   [Read more…]

Pictorial: Sunday at the Hillcrest Farmers Market

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In our house we much of the grocery shopping on the weekends, and this includes regular trips to the Hillcrest Farmers Market. It’s always a thrill to come down the hill from Washington Street to the point where you can see the magnificence of the market spread out along Normal Street. Typically there are more than 140 vendors, selling everything from raspberries to falafel to hand puppets. Much of the produce is locally grown and virtually everything is sold with the kind of pride that only comes from having a personal connection with your product.  There are Farmers Markets throughout San Diego County every day of the week and even a magazine (Edible San Diego) that keeps up with all the seasonal events associated with locavorism. Here’s a handy list of those markets and their days/hours of operation.

This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Hillcrest Market. Besides being one of the larger markets in town, they have a robust web site, complete with a list of all their sellers and even a blog that shares impressions of the weekly event.  I took a boatload of photos last Sunday that I’d like to share with you here. Bon appetit!   [Read more…]

An Unwelcome Insight

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As I have been aging, I have spent more time thinking about my Mother and Father. I will not dwell on my mother, because there are not many good things I can say about her. (After you read about my father you will probably say there aren’t many good things to say about him either.) Suffice it to say that my mother was a social butterfly; more concerned with appearances than substance. She was a pianist and she and her sister were Leonard Bernstein’s first music teachers. Her parents were immigrants from Russia and Poland, and my grandfather was one of the nicest people I had ever met. My grandmother had a mean streak – which was inherited by my mother – and not nearly as nice as Grandpa. My mother and father were very wealthy – more about that in a moment – and I had my own governess until I was seven years old.

We lived just on the border of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles; yet I was culturally deprived. I had never been north of the San Fernando Valley; east of East Los Angeles; or south of San Pedro.. I had been sent to Girl Scout camp on Catalina, where I proceeded to get seasick from the time we left San Pedro until the return. I was always left in the care of the governess or the maid. When my mother married my father, an immigrant from Budapest, she became a “decorator to the stars” and it was not unusual to have celebrities in the house daily, nor was it unusual for her to take me on some of her jobs to “show me off.”   [Read more…]

Now Playing at the Old Globe: The Trials of Darwin

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by Mel Freilicher

In the furor of attempting to clean out my disastrously cluttered home office before school starts again, I came across a recent issue of the National Education Association’s magazine dedicated entirely to teaching Darwin. Before tossing it, I read some astonishing and depressing statistics about the high percentage of Americans who disbelieve in evolution (including, if I recall correctly, about 25% of those with a college education, and more than 50% of those without one). Mostly that issue detailed how teachers might use the mass of scientific evidence from a wide array of disciplines to make the case for Darwin.

That this case still needs to be made is in itself bizarre, of course, since “The Origin of the Species” was published in 1859.  It can’t be accounted for simply by the many home-schooled children of fundamentalists, or by graduates of Christian academies such as the chain that unsuccessfully brought litigation against the UC system a few years back for not accepting their creationism course as a legitimate science entry requirement.  Even before the right wing’s aggressive and sustained push to control local school boards, many public schools in conservative regions had been teaching evolution– as a thoroughly discredited theory; I vividly remember one student (she’s now a science writer!) from a small, predominantly Mormon town in northern California who was totally shocked when she came to UCSD, and learned that such debunking was hardly a universally accepted truth.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – UT-San Diego Derides Balboa Park Plan Opposition as “Idiotic”; LAPD Bust Up Occupy Artwalk Artists

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The dark lords of Mission Valley know what’s best for us…. Our daily newspaper says that opponents of the Jacobs/Saunders plan for Balboa Park are being “idiotic”.  The paper featured an editorial yesterday entitled “Idiotic, Let Us Count the Ways”.  The Editorial Board pasted that label on Councilwoman Sherri Lightner and Congressman/Mayoral candidate Bob Filner, D-San Diego, among others, for their opposition to the current arrangement. Questions about the process involved in approving the plan, its legality and its shaky financial assumptions, apparently weren’t worth considering by the UT’s opinion makers in Mission Valley as they pursued an agenda that is, at its core, anti-democratic and plutocratic in nature.

Opposition in the community was deep and widespread, with comments about the project running as high as 25 to 1 against.  Are all those people idiots? There was considerable frustration and anger sparked by the perception that opponents were simply being ignored at every step of the way. It’s not surprising that everyday people started to feel like this scenario was simply a show designed to legitimize the City’s special relationship with a Very Wealthy Individual. Passions ran high, and as our reporter Andy Cohen tried to point out, some individuals –on both sides of this issue– may have crossed the line in terms of expressing their disagreement in polite terms.  The fact is that hardly anybody disagrees with the kernel of truth at the center of this debate—that cars need to be removed from the core of Balboa Park. The question was (and is), how do we get there?

The UT-San Diego editorial made it perfectly clear that citizen input will be derided and disparaged in these sorts of instances. Good luck to anybody who dares oppose their grand visions for a shiny new stadium downtown or publisher Doug Manchester’s plans for mega development along the San Diego river—if they called people idiotic for speaking out against the Balboa Park plan, lord only knows what words they’ll come up with for opponents of their own pet projects.   [Read more…]

Field of View: Building the Second San Salvador

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There’s more than airport construction happening along Harbor Drive. The San Diego Maritime Museum, together with the Port and City of San Diego, are building a replica of the San Salvador—the flagship vessel of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo as he explored the west coast. The full-sized ship, which will be fully functional and historically accurate, is slated for completion by November 2013. It is an all-volunteer project.   [Read more…]

Balboa Park Project Appears to be Illegal, Places Park’s National Historic Landmark Status in Jeopardy

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Deeply flawed plan could cost San Diego tens of millions of dollars.

The Irwin Jacobs plan to transform San Diego’s Balboa Park may be illegal according to the City Municipal Code. In her statements to the City Council at the July 9th City Council meeting, Susan Brandt-Hawley, an attorney who worked with the Save Our Heritage Organisation in challenging the project, warned the members that in supporting the plan they would be in violation of the law.

In question are two particular sub-sections of the Municipal Code.   [Read more…]

San Diego Experiences: THE VISIT

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By Karen Kenyon

He stood there, not more than 3 feet from where my friend and I were sitting in the French bakery.

She said later, she thought he was going to sing.   We laughed at that afterwards.   But at the time it was anything but funny.

Tall, a large build, African American, his clothing was casual and clean.   And then you saw the cotton ball taped to the side of his hand, indicating blood withdrawn, or something given intravenously.    A hospital bracelet on his left wrist.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he announced.   All then turned to look at him.   He commanded our attention, and his invitation was offered with some kind of bravado and respect.

His eyes appeared to be squinted shut — almost like a little boy who’d memorized a speech, and now it was time to deliver.

“I have just come from the hospital’s psychiatric ward….”   [Read more…]

Restaurant Review – “FIESTA CANTINA”

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Fiesta Cantina, 142 University Ave., San Diego, Ca 92103

One of the nice things about finally having a date was going to someplace I had not been before, with a person I had not met before, and with a waitress that was already celebrating the Gay Pride Parade.

He suggested that we meet at the “FIESTA CANTINA” to indulge in their Taco Tuesday repast. Their menu for Tuesday was an “all you can eat” taco’s, featuring three different fillings, including rice and beans and salsa for $4.95. There was a one beverage minimum, but during Happy Hour if you purchased 1 margarita the other one was free. (Same with beer – buy one beer – the second was free.)   [Read more…]

San Diego: America’s Finest Dressed City

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By Sub-Committee / Special to San Diego Free Press

Sub-committee report #3  Now that we will create parking spaces in Balboa Park that cost about $58,000 a piece, and public beach toilets in North Pacific Beach that cost $100,000 per toilet stall, and recently re-modeled “art toilets” in Ocean Beach, I think we can legitimately call ourselves the “finest dressed city in America.” We are obliged to dress nicely and have nice bathrooms because we are eager to invite the world to our town to party. Being rich costs a lot of money, you know, and we would like to thank the pleasant and well-meaning golf and yacht club committees for their advice to the city council members on the subject of our attire.

Our local news television stations are also eager to keep the party going as they don’t miss a chance to throw up on the airwaves (in flash subliminal ways) 5 year old photos of standing room only at the beaches before the beach alcohol ban in 2008. The beaches have become much less crowded and mild-mannered since the booze ban, so I hope the revelers are not disappointed.

We’re beach people here, and wannabes, so we know how to throw a bash, and enjoy it too.   [Read more…]

“Lucy in the Sky” by Another John

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I recently took a writing workshop at the Ink Spot called “How to be Funny Even if You’re Not” led by John Vorhaus, a man who is pretty funny which I think helps if you want to show somebody how to be funny.

And he’s been funny a long time, working in the television industry both here and abroad. He once recruited and trained writers for Bulgaria’s adaptation of Married… with Children which to me, for some reason, is funny in and of itself – as I try to picture a family as dysfunctional as the Bundys speaking and doing pratfalls with a Slavic flavor.

John’s got a book out that I haven’t bought yet but I’m about to amazon it. He’s actually got several books out but this one, “Lucy in the Sky,” intrigues me, particularly, since I was in an evolutionary state of being when Sir Paul and John gave us Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Reading a few words John sent me about his book, I picture myself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Somebody calls me, I answer quite slowly, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes and I can visualize John’s coming-of-age tale set in Milwaukee, in 1969, when I was thirty-one getting out of a marriage that was way over and done, so glad that I hadn’t murdered that woman whom I once thought of as The One.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line: Will Bridgepoint’s House of Cards Collapse? And Will San Diego Be Left Holding the Bag?

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July 11, 2012- One of San Diego’s largest employers is headed for financial and legal  troubles that could have a serious impact on the region. Bridgepoint Education took a bath in the stock market Monday, losing one third of its value and continuing downward on Tuesday. Over the past year the company’s stock price has dropped by more than 50%. This week’s sharp drop in value at the stock exchange happened after its flagship school, Ashford University, was denied accreditation by the Western Association of Schools. The upshot of this ruling is that the company will need to relocate hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of employees out of the San Diego region.

The for profit education company depends on the status of the Ashford campus to give it credibility with its on-line students, who make up 99% of its enrollment, and the financial organizations that loan them money for tuition. Standing in the way of certification is Bridgepoint’s drop out rate; of the nearly quarter million students enrolled over the past four years (2007-2011), 127,879 withdrew from the school. Also troubling for the Western Association was the fact that the school spends 31% of its operating costs on recruitment, well above the amount it spends on actual instruction or student services like job counseling. Just 22% of Ashford students graduate; the actual campus in Iowa has a mere 1,000 students taking classes, 85,000 are studying online.   [Read more…]

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