By Ernie McCray
I don’t know where
the Regular Joe is with games
but I have lived to play all the games.
Hey, what can I say,
starting when I was but a babe,
I spent the greatest part of my childhood age
catching something
or knocking somebody down
or vice-versa,
copping a Heisman Trophy pose
and sidestepping some clown
who’s trying to run you down
so he can knock you down… [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
A non-profit group has filed suit against the City of San Diego, seeking to block approval of a special-event permit for the 60th Annual World Championship Over-The-Line Tournament (OTL), scheduled for two weekends in July.
FreePB.org, a group that in the past opposed the city’s alcohol ban on beaches, is saying that the permit approval process was illegal and therefore null and void until an environmental review is conducted.
Their opposition to the OTL tournament permit was triggered by the city’s rejection of a permit for a beach event called the Leisure Olympics. FreePB asked for many of the same concessions granted to OTL, including exemptions from San Diego’s beach booze ban that would allow for individuals to bring their own alcohol and purchase alcohol from vendors. They also vowed to impose exactly the same “safeguards” promised by OTL [Read more…]
By Ernie McCray
I got a call on my message machine asking for my help regarding a “secular” matter. It was my first such request in all my 75 years so I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why me?” since I don’t, although I’m not religious, necessarily consider myself a secular human being, and also since this particular worldly problem pertained to La Jolla.
I mean when I moved to San Diego in 1962, I was, in and of my 6 foot five black self, a problem in La Jolla, feeling, whenever I visited, about as welcomed as a seal in the Children’s Pool, like an unwashed heathen in a pristine hallowed place. [Read more…]
By Jim Miller
In this column that originally ran in December of last year, I discuss “the conservative media entertainment complex” as conceived of by former Bush propagandist David Frum and note that he only touches on the tip of the corporate media propaganda iceberg. What follows this is a beginners primer on how to decipher corporate media propaganda.
In the weeks following the election, David Frum made waves by explaining the shock in conservative circles over Romney’s loss with a bit of interesting media criticism: “Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.”
Of course, those of us with a historical memory longer than five minutes found it amusing to hear this from Frum, the author of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech. Indeed, Frum was one of the central ideologues promulgating lies aboutIraqand demonizing dissent as unpatriotic. I guess it takes one to know one.
Still, despite the bitter irony of Frum playing the role of truth-teller, he is on to something. The trouble with his analysis is that it stops at the obvious. The truth is that the problem with the media is not limited to the universe of Fox News and right wing radio pundits. The American media landscape distorts the truth not because it is liberal or conservative but because it is corporate.
Eds. Note: Originally Posted in December 2012. We’re re-running some of the best of his columns while Jim takes this ‘vacation’ thing we keep hearing about. [Read more…]
By Anna Daniels
I am sitting with my eighty-two year old father in the back yard of the house I had grown up in. It is summertime and we are sitting in lawn chairs talking and drinking sweet tea.
“Dad, are you happy?” I ask. He sits silently for a while, as if he were carefully pondering something he had never considered before.
“Well, yes, I’m happy,” he finally responds. “I put a roof over my family’s head and food on the table. You are all educated and have your own homes and families. You bet I’m a happy man.”
It was now my turn to fall silent. [Read more…]
By Beryl Forman
Building a thriving bi-national region between San Diego and Tijuana is an enormous feat. Based on conversations with practical-minded leaders around bi-national planning, “intentional collaborations and concerted leadership” are the foundation of success. Aside from the largest setback to improve bi-national affairs, which is the border wait time, much can be accomplished on the neighborhood level to lure travel between the region. With a growing interest to establish a vital bi-national region, I believe that in the next few years we must plan for small scale pilot projects, in an effort to establish a framework for collaboration and build positive momentum.
Improving the livability of our urban environments commonly starts in the immediate vicinity of where people live, work, shop and socialize. While large scale planning projects such as transit oriented development have their place, incremental, small-scale street improvements are increasingly seen as a way to garner community interest and support before making significant financial commitments. [Read more…]
Courtesty of UCTV [Read more…]
By Tom Hunter
I’ve been reading the memoirs of Casanova, written when he was 73 years old and not to be published til after his death. I am blown away by his candor and intelligence and the social backstory that made up life in 18th century.
They seemed to have the same twists of fate that are still with us. [Read more…]
Let this moment be a educational one so let’s have the Debate that the President calls for
What a dastardly crazy last nine days it’s been.
Beginning Thursday, June 6th, with the Washington Post and the Guardian in London both running with the explosive news about the National Security Agency surveillance programs, we’ve been hit with daily revelations – that are still continuing every news cycle – that have created quiet a long list of whistle blower-delivered disclosures about what the government and the NSA are and have been doing to us – the American people.
Also on June 6th, the director of national intelligence confirmed the existence of a secret program in which the government has tapped into the central servers of 9 leading internet companies to search for data linked to terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation. During this six year old program – called PRISM – the FBI and NSA searched emails, videos, photographs and other documents involving Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple – but not Twitter – yet.
Over last weekend, we found out that the federal government has amassed a database at least for these last 7 years – since 2006 during the Bush administration – with details on every telephone call made within the U.S. and between this country and phones overseas. The data collected includes the phone numbers, the time, date, duration of the calls and the route the calls take through the vast phone networks. [Read more…]
By Mikey Beats
San Diego DJ Mikey Beats, and his nurse wife Jenny, decided to take a vacation to Machu Picchu, Peru. San Diego Free Press published their daily adventures. Read parts I & II, part III, parts IV & IV.5, part V, part VI, part VII, partVIII, part IX and part X.
Our plane landed in Miami at about 8am on the 12th of June, eight hours after leaving Peru. As we exited the plane it was a long walk to go through customs and we were greeted by an old, angry, white man with a badge yelling at us asking, “Why are you walking down this line?! You should be in that line!”
I responded, “Because your stanchions are wrong, calm down!” Jenny and I had to walk all the way around back to where we came in and then got in a line next to a middle aged, angry, black woman yelling at other Americans to get in line. We didn’t know what was going on and why people were so mad and then we realized we were back in America. [Read more…]
By Richard Juarez
I had been looking forward to a little freedom hanging out with Tony. Since being restricted to the house I hadn’t seen him much except at school. Before leaving for the afternoon my parents told me to get a couple of things at Amador’s. So I decided to do it just before Tony got off work. That way we could take the long way home and walk around the neighborhood a little before my parents got back. I was standing just inside in the doorway of the store waiting for Tony to get off work when Pablito walked in.
“Hey, vato,” he said, smiling, “What’s going on?”
“You dummy, you got us into trouble,” I answered. “That’s what’s going on! That placa you put outside on the wall, don’t you ever think about where you’re putting that stuff?” [Read more…]
By Carlos Batara
He never went home.
He left his native county at the age of 20 to find work. Born in an impoverished area of a poor country, he left home to earn money which he could send back to his mother and eight siblings.
He ventured through, and stayed briefly at, a few countries, eventually reaching the United States.
For the next 25 years, he crisscrossed California, Arizona, and Utah, moving from crop to crop before settling in San Diego where he worked as a dishwasher at one of the city’s most prestigious restaurants.
He worked Monday through Sunday at minimum wage, and was given only two days off per year, Thanksgiving and Christmas. [Read more…]
