BIZ CENTER ART BECOMES ON THE EDGE GALLERY
NEW SHOW “VALENTINES REVISITED” FEB. 15 February 3, 2014 (La Mesa) – Biz Center Art has become On The Edge Gallery as of January 1 as a result of a change in landlords. The gallery is still managed by the same people in the same building which is now managed by the Business Center of La Mesa. “The change in landlords means that we can’t be Biz Center Art any longer,” said gallery manager Midge Hyde. “We wanted our new name to reflect our image as well as our location.” The gallery is located at the eastern edge of San Diego and the western edge of La Mesa. The next show, Valentines Revisited, will be February 15 from 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. It will feature over 15 local artists and a bargain bin with art under $100. The reception will include a food truck from DK Kitchens out front. The gallery is still located at 7317 El Cajon Blvd., La Mesa. The updated web address is www.OnTheEdgeArtGallery.com. Contact Midge Hyde at 619-466-3711 for more information.
READERS & WRITERS CALENDAR FEB. 2 – 17
February 3, 2014 (San Diego) – Scroll down for literary events across our region of interest to readers and writers. For a complete Calendar including Authors Events, go to www.SDWriteWay.org For all San Diego County Library events, go to: http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/news-events/index.shtml 48th Annual Local Authors Exhibit Highlights Talent The Local Author Exhibit highlights the intellectual and creative accomplishments of writers in the San Diego region. This year’s exhibit runs through the entire month of February and features nearly 400 books and 60 eBooks. This is the first time that the exhibit will be hosted in the lobby of the new Central Library @ Joan Λ Irwin Jacobs Common. Beginning February 3, also there will be an online gallery of each of the participating authors, along with their photos, brief biographies, and publishing information. Learn More: http://sandiego.communityguides.com/localauthors February 3 (Monday, 7:30 pm) — Warwick’s will host integrative medicine practitioner, teacher, and blogger Chris Kresser, who will discuss and sign his book Your Personal Paleo Code: The 3-Step Plan to Lose Weight, Reverse Disease, and Stay Fit and Healthy for Life. This event is free and open to the public. In order to be signed, Your Personal Paleo Code must be purchased from Warwick’s. Background (from the publisher): In Your Personal Paleo Code Chris Kresser uses the Paleo diet as a baseline from which you can tailor the ideal three-step program-Reset, Rebuild, Revive-to fit your lifestyle, body type, genetic blueprint, and individual needs. Kresser helps further personalize your prescription for specific health conditions, from heart disease and high blood pressure to thyroid disorders and digestive problems. Along with a 7-day meal plan and delectable, nutritious recipes, Your Personal Paleo Code offers natural solutions and an avalanche of groundbreaking advice on how to restore a healthy gut and immune system; how to eliminate toxins; which fats to eat liberally; how to choose the healthiest proteins; and much more. Best of all, you only have to follow the program 80% of the time; there’s room to indulge in moderation while still experiencing dramatic results. Based on cutting-edge scientific research, Your Personal Paleo Code is designed to be flexible and user-friendly, with helpful charts, quizzes, and effective action steps to help you lose weight, reverse disease, and stay fit and healthy for life. For more information regarding the event, please contact Warwick’s Books | 7812 Girard Avenue | La Jolla, Ca | 92037 | Ph. (858) 454-0347 | www.warwicks.com. February 4 (Tuesday, 6:00 pm) — February is Black History Month. Join us for Storytime and activities featuring Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine and Kadir Nelson. Barnes & Noble, Oceanside, 2615 Vista Way, Oceanside: Contact Lisa Kovach, Community Relations Manager, at (760) 529-0270 or crm2153@bn.com for additional information. February 4 (Tuesday, 7:30 pm) — Warwick’s will host acclaimed novelist Susan Meissner, who will discuss and sign her book A Fall of Marigolds. This event is free and open to the public. In order to be signed A Fall of Marigolds must be purchased from Warwick’s. Background: A beautiful scarf, passed down through the generations, connects two women who learn that the weight of the world is made bearable by the love we give away… September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries…and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she’s made. Will what she learns devastate her or free her? September 2011. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone. Then a long-lost photograph appears in a national magazine, and she is forced to relive the terrible day her husband died in the collapse of the World Trade Towers…the same day a stranger reached out and saved her. Will a chance reconnection and a century-old scarf open Taryn’s eyes to the larger forces at work in her life? For more information regarding the event, please contact Warwick’s Books | 7812 Girard Avenue | La Jolla, Ca | 92037 | Ph. (858) 454-0347 | www.warwicks.com. February 5 (Wednesday, 7:30 pm) — Warwick’s will host syndicated national travel radio host, publisher of frommers.com, and author Pauline Frommer. Ms. Frommer will be conducting a travel presentation addressing such topics as holiday travel survival, trends and top destinations for 2014, and how to make a vacation great at any price range. She will also be signing copies of her book Frommer’s EasyGuide to New York City 2014. This event is free and open to the public. In order to be signed, books must be purchased from Warwick’s. Background: Pauline Frommer started traveling with her guidebook-writing parents at the age of four months and hasn’t stopped since. Her first job in travel was on the website Frommers.com, and eventually she worked her way up to Editor in Chief. Pauline also served as Travel Editor for MSNBC.com for several years, before working with John Wiley and Sons to create the award-winning Pauline Frommer Guidebooks, a 14-book series that won the coveted “Best Guidebook of the Year” title three years in a row from the North American Travel Journalists Association and once from the Society of American Travel Writers) For four years, Pauline created weekly travel segments for CNN’s Headline News and CNN’s Pipeline. You may also have seen her talking travel on The Today Show, Live with Regis and Kelly, The O’Reilly Factor, NBC Nightly News and ABC World News, Good Morning America, FOX News and every local news station you can name. Her writings have been widely published in everything from Budget Travel Magazine to the Dallas Morning News to Nick, Jr. magazine. For more information regarding the event,
POLITICAL REFLECTIONS COLUMN: THE MAKING OF THE RIGHT- -50 YEARS LATER
Why Goldwater Didn’t Become President: He Was Ahead of, Not Behind, the Times By Mark Gabrish Conlan • for East County Magazine, www.eastcountymagazine.org February 1, 2014 (San Diego)–Not long ago, I was at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park on a Sunday afternoon to hear San Diego’s civic organist, Carol Williams, play her weekly concert. After she was finished I walked over to one of the donation tables to renew my Spreckels Organ Society membership. The woman who helped me saw the book I was reading — a well-worn paperback of Theodore H. White’s book The Making of the President 1964 — and asked, “Is that about the Goldwater campaign?” I said yes, though the book is as much about Lyndon Johnson’s takeover of the presidency after the John F. Kennedy assassination and his campaign to keep the job. The woman then startled me by saying, “We need someone like Goldwater today — a progressive Republican.” I didn’t say anything to her after that, though I was astounded by the idea that anyone, anywhere for whom Barry Goldwater was a living historical memory would have described him as “progressive.” After all, for goodness’ sake, he’s the man whose best-known book was called The Conscience of a Conservative! I could envision ol’ Barry’s corpse doing cartwheels in his coffin over that one. And yet her peculiar, to say the least, description of Goldwater as a “progressive Republican” only underscored the extent to which Goldwater and his ideas have triumphed in American politics. When the 1964 election happened — I was 11 but an already highly politicized 11, and my mom had taken me to Democratic headquarters to stuff envelopes and lick stamps for the Johnson campaign — we genuine liberals, progressives and radicals heaved a sigh of relief. We had slain the great Right-wing dragon, giving the Republicans such an overwhelming defeat they would have to move back to the center or die as a political force. Boy, were we wrong. The French composer Claude Debussy described his great German predecessor, Richard Wagner, as “a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.” The Goldwater campaign of 1964 was just the opposite: an ugly sunrise that was mistaken for a dusk. Johnson’s overwhelming election triumph of 1964 (with 61 percent of the popular vote to Goldwater’s 39) was almost precisely reversed in the next election in 1968, with the Right-wing campaigns of Richard Nixon and George Wallace garnering 57 percent of the vote between them to Hubert Humphrey’s 43 percent — though the closeness of the vote between Nixon and Humphrey gave the illusion that the electorate was more evenly divided than it was and lulled the Democrats into a false sense of complacency that lasted most of the next decade. What happened? Partly that explosive confluence of events collectively known to history as “The Sixties.” The African-American civil rights movement split almost as soon as it had achieved its two greatest legislative triumphs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Younger Blacks lost patience with Dr. Martin Luther King and his nonviolent strategy; they also rejected the idea of liberal whites as partners (even junior partners) in the movement and called for “Black Power!” The war in Viet Nam droned on and on, as President Johnson abandoned funding for his Great Society programs and fed more and more conscript soldiers into the maw of an unwinnable war — thereby alienating the Left of the Democratic party and ensuring a primary challenge that culminated in Johnson’s withdrawal from his 1968 re-election bid, Robert Kennedy’s murder and Hubert Humphrey’s nomination as blood ran through the streets of Chicago. But America’s shift to the Right in the 1960’s didn’t just happen. The Right itself knew exactly what it was doing. Unlike the liberals, progressives and Leftists who withdrew from politics in a mixture of despair and disgust after the Republican triumphs of 1972, 1980 and 1984, the Right-wingers who had engineered the Goldwater nomination and the takeover of the Republican Party persisted. They regarded Goldwater’s defeat, not as a catastrophe, but merely as a battle they had lost in a war they still fully intended to win. And they did so by targeting the two mega-issues that enabled them to split the New Deal coalition that had dominated American politics from 1932 to 1964: race and culture. The 1960’s were the decade in which America’s two major political parties flipped their positions on civil rights for people of color in general and African-Americans in particular. By voting against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater opened the South as Republican Presidential territory, taking the five states of the Deep South — Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi (where he won a whopping 87.1 percent of the vote to Johnson’s 12.9 percent) and South Carolina — and setting the stage for Wallace’s openly racist independent Presidential campaign of 1968, which carried four of the Southern states Goldwater had taken in 1964 (all but South Carolina, which went for Nixon) and added Arkansas. What’s more, in order to neutralize Wallace’s potential support and win the election, Republican nominee Richard Nixon and U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond created the “Southern strategy,” by which the “party of Lincoln” abandoned its historic commitment to African-American equality and became the party of white resistance and racism. Though Nixon probably intended this merely as a short-term tactic to meet the Wallace challenge, it became a long-term strategy that made the Republican party the representative of white reaction. This helped move not only Southerners but Northern whites as well — particularly the blue-collar ethnics who had been the bulwark of Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition — away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans. The 1960’s also “flipped” the historic positions of the Left and the Right on the issues Goldwater called “ethics” and which since have been known as “values” and “culture.” In America’s two previous peak decades for the Left, the 1890’s and the 1930’s,
SHERIFF’S DEPT. WARNS OF PHONY PEACE OFFICER CALLS ASKING FOR CASH
February 3, 2014 (San Diego)–Residents of San Diego County are being asked to report any calls they receive from someone claiming to be a peace officer and subsequently asking for cash payment, the Sheriff’s Department announced this week. According to the department, several residents have reported suspicious phone calls by a man who says he’s a member of the Sheriff’s Department, then states that the person answering the phone — or a member of the family — has an outstanding warrant for their arrest. He then asks for cash payment in order to avoid arrest. Sheriff Bill Gore is reminding residents that the Sheriff’s Department will never call anyone seeking payment for outstanding arrest warrants. If you’ve received a call similar to the one described above, authorities are asking you to report it to the Sheriff’s Department or your local police agency. Think you may have information on this case? You can leave an anonymous tip by calling the Sheriff’s Department at 858-565-5200 or Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477 and be eligible for a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
BOULEVARD PLANNING GROUP TO DISCUSS DRAFT EIR FOR SOITEC SOLAR PROJECT
Photos: Left–Soitec’s project in Newberry Springs scraped bare the earth and emits glare, despite company claims to the contrary. Right–Shaded meadows with mature trees currently support a rich abundance of wildlife as well as grazing livestock. Soitec proposes to put over 8,000 panels on some 1,700 acres here in East County. Residents have launched an online petition asking Supervisors to save their wildlife, water supplies, wild and scenic places. and put solar in urban environments instead. You can read the petition and sign it here. By Miriam Raftery Julian Rudd-Falls and Mark Gavin contributed to this report. February 2, 2014 (Boulevard)–The Boulevard Planning Group will hear from staff and Soitec representatives about a proposed EIR for Soitec’s controversial solar projects on Thursday, February 6 at 7 p.m. The project would include nearly 9,000 30-foot-tall panels covering some 1,700 acres on wetlands and meadows in this rural community. The meeting will be held at the Boulevard Fire Station on Ribbonwood Road. Community concerns include destruction of scenic views, glare, and draining groundwater for grading 1,700 acres amid the worst drought in state history. At a Soitec community presentation last week, representatives from Soitec and its consultant, Dudek, insisted that panels are treated to resist glare. However photos taken of a similar Soitec project in Newberry Springs, California show glare off project panels (photo, left). Newberry Springs Supervisors issued a moratorium on new solar projects amid residents’ complaints of glare off some existing panels, though Soitec has insisted the complaints did not stem from its projects. The moratorium has since been lifted. Residents have voiced concerns that Soitec, like SDG&E with its recent substation in Boulevard, could have seriously underestimated its water usage. SDG&E used three times more water than it estimated for the substation, attributing the massive miscalculation to the dry soils in this area. The Draft Programmatic EIR for Soitec’s project includes an estimate for water use that appears to have omitted a concrete batch plant for making concrete on site, a typically water-intensive activity. Over 70 people turned out last week at Soitec’s community meeting. All residents who spoke with ECM indicated that they opposed the projects. Teresa DeGroot told ECM she drives 135 miles a day to work so that she can live in the backcountry. “When I retire, it’s all going to be industrial out here,” she said angrily. A March 2012 letter from Soitec executive Mike Armstrong to Ron Roberts, then Chair of the Board of Supervisors, asked that the Board direct staff to “fast track” the approval process for Soitec’s projects and to prepare a programmatic CEQA document that would allow complaint projects to be streamlined without the normal environmental reviews. Another Soitec letter in November sent by Soitec’s Patrick Brown sent to Joseph Farace County Planning and Development asked for an amendment to the General Plan to allow its projects to go through. Supervisors later gutted Boulevard’s general plan to enable this and other industrial-scale renewable energy projects to be considered, as Soitec promised to bring manufacturing jobs to the San Diego region and help meet clean energy goals for the state. A preliminary list of concerns submitted by Donna Tisdale, Chair of the Boulevard Planning Group, along with the Protect Our Communities Foundation and Backcountry Against Dumps stated, that General Plan amendments were made “to benefit commercial interests at the expense of resident and other non-participating land owners and resource” and that these changes are “ biased, unnecessary, and unjustified.” A second document from a presentation by the same groups lists additional troubling issues. The documents cite objections including adverse impacts to Historic Route 80, scenic and open viewsheds, bucolic views of grazing livestock, abundant wildlife, and overall appealing rural community character, as well as severe fire danger, water issues and removal of land from availability for other more compatible uses, such as vineyards. A Dudek biologist said the project would scrape the land bare, with vegetation kept no more than a few inches high. The project site would be fenced except for a narrow “corridor” for wildlife along a creek, though it’s debatable whether shy species such as endangered Peninsular Bighorn sheep or mountain lions found in the vicinity would want to traverse a creek lined by massive, rotating, glaring solar panels that emit heat. At this week’s meeting, Boulevard’s Planning Group will also have updates on Tule Wind, Sempra’s cross-border transmission line and related projects. Full full agenda and meeting notice. The citizens’ petition says that fast-tracking resulted in an EIR riddled with errors. The petition concludes that “a project isn’t “green” if it endangers wildlife, destroys ecosystems and rural communities’ character. Solar panels belong in the urban environment where power is used – on rooftops and parking lots, or on reclaimed sites such as former landfills – not on wild and scenic lands that must be bulldozed to industrialize rural America. Our town is a canary in a coal mine – County Supervisors gutted our community plan over the objections of our planning group and residents—and the Soitec project is just one of several Goliath-scale energy projects proposed to decimate our wild and scenic places.”
PARK STATION SCALES BACK PROPOSAL FOR LA MESA HIGHRISE: DRAFT EIR NOW ONLINE
By Miriam Raftery February 2, 2014 (La Mesa) – A Draft Environmental Impact Report for the controversial Park Station at the Crossroads project in La Mesa is now available for public comments and review. Originally, the developerm Kitzman, had proposed an 18 story highrise. That proposal has been scaled down to lower heights in the EIR, with a low-profile facade but talller buildings stepped up behind. A tower in one section would soar to 110 feet—or about 11 stories, twice the height of the current 46 foot limit, thus it would require a variance to win approval by the Planning Commission and ultimately, the City Council. Despite the changes, the City’s analysis concludes that “no feasible mitigation measures exist to reduce potential impacts to scenic vistas.” Despite the new proposal’s replacement of “unattractive strip retail mall with high quality mixed use design, the project would exceed the mass and scale of the surrounding area and would result in significant impacts to the visual character of the site and community,” the draft EIR further states. The proposed project, touted as a mixed-use urban village on 5.23 acres at the southeast corner of Baltimore Drive and El Cajon Boulevard, could include 416 residential units, 61,000 square feet of retai, 146,000 square feet of commercial office space and/or a a 500 room hotel. It would include just one parking space per residential unit due to proximity to mass transit. Air quality would also be negatively during construction and could not be mitigated. Increased traffic is also a concern, although the dense development is touted by supporters as transit-friendly since it would be located along trolley and bus lines. Three other alternatives are also proposed. An Office Mixed Use Alternative would eliminate the hotel and limit building height to four stories. This version includes 416 residential units, 146,000 square feet of office development, and 28,000 square feet of specialty retail. A Linear Park Alternative would add a 1.09 acre linear park on Nebo Drive, increasing the project’s total acreage and raise the number of dwelling units to 500 and residents to 1,145. The hotel, office and retail footprint would also be enlarged. A No Project Alternative was also considered and would be the environmentally superior alternative due to aesthetics, greenhouse gas emission, noise and traffic, according to the Draft EIR. The second most environmentally superior alternative would be the Office Mixed Use option. Even scaled down, the project would still be among the largest developments to be built in La Mesa since Grossmont Center and would be the second tallest structure in town after Grossmont Hospital. Early public reactions to the proposal were frosty, based on comments made at public hearings held over the last two years, though the project would be built on a blighted properly formerly occupied by a car dealership. The project, if approved, would boost tax revenues for the region, but would also irreversibly alter the community character, looming over the historic downtown Village district. But backers contend that higher density development in urban areas is more desirable than sprawl in the backcountry, where water is scarce and fire danger increased with more housing in the urban-wildland interface. The public can submit comments on the drat EIR from now through March 17. Comments should be submitted to Bill Chopyk, Director of Community Development, 8130 Allison Avenue, La Mesa, CA 91942. The Draft EIR can be reviewed at the La Mesa Library as well as online via the link at the top of this article.
STORM TO HIT REGION TONIGHT, BRINGING RAIN COUNTYWIDE AND SNOW IN MOUNTAINS
February 2, 2014 (San Diego’s East County )—An urgent winter weather message has been issued by the National Weather Service as a low pressure system sweeps into San Diego County bringing cold air, rain west of the mountains. Two to four inches of snow are possible above 4000 to 4500 feet. There is a chance of thunderstorms and over coastal areas, possible waterspouts tonight through Tuesday. While rain is good news for our drought-parched state, a winter weather advisory means travelers may face difficulties. Be prepared for slippery roads and reduced visibility. Use caution while driving and if you must drive at higher elevations, carry chains, extra clothing, food and water. Sign up to receive free Viejas Wildfire & Emergency Alerts at the top right side of our homepage and also receive our free weekly newsletter with top news, events and emergency updates. You an also follow ViejasAlerts on Twitter for brief alerts on your mobile phone. We recommend all of the above, since you don’t know what form of communication will work best in a major regional emergency.
REPORT FAULTS CALTRANS FOR FAILING TO FOCUS ON SUSTAINABILITY
By Miriam Raftery February 2, 2014 (Sacramento)—The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is “significantly out of step with best practices in the transportation field and with the state of California’s policy expectations,” concludes an assessment review conducted by the State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI). A key criticism was the agency’s focus on a “move cars faster” culture and a draft five-year strategic plan at Caltrans that completely ignores sustainability and state legislative goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Duncan McFetridge, co-chair of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation that recently sued the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) for similarly focusing on building more freeways instead of mass transit to reduce miles driven, cheered the report on Caltrans. The report “vindicates everything we’ve done, said and written for the past eight years,” he wrote. According to the report, “A built environment that reduces vehicle miles driven (VMT) is precisely the goal of the State’s landmark climate policy…and it is precisely the opposite of what Caltrans was organized to do—foster higher auto mobility without regard to land use.” It further notes that “even though transportation is the source of 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, the (Caltrans) strategic plan was written as though the law did not exist.” The report found that Caltrans has “come to resemble a large engineering firm.” McFetridge added that SANDAG has functioned like a “business consortium that hires them with public funds.” Orgaized to build a network of highways linking cities, Caltrans soon found the highway system largely built-out and focused more on operation and maintenance, while still orienting toward projects for new capacity and reconstruction. Policies that gave more power to local governments to dictate shaping of transportation systems including state highway have also contributed to the problem, along with the state sub-allocating funding to the local level and cutting funds at the state level. Caltrans has also failed to keep pace with changes such as Californians driving less than in the past, a fact that should allow less to be spent on highway capacity. “Sustainability initiatives frequently have worked around, not through, Caltrans—even when transportation is the topic,” the report found. The report indicated problems should not be blamed on current management at Caltrans since problems are longstanding, and the authors see “rational hope for its reform.” The report calls for modernization and a culture change at the department. It calls for a new mission, vision and goals better aligned with current conditions and a portfolio of skills and practices to meet modern demands. Although Caltrans produced an important gide to foster low-travel land used called Smart Mobility 2010, the report observes, “the department has almost completely ignored the report and failed to implement its most important recommendations.” Moreover, the department lacks accountability to hold staff accountable and to foster innovation in what the report describes is “a culture of risk aversion and even fear.” Interestingly, while Caltrans has come under some fire recently from fiscal conservatives including Senate Joel Anderson (R-Alpine) for its expanded budget, the report also found that salaries are too low for some employee groups including planners and managers, leading to a “brain drain” that prevents Caltrans from rewarding good work with a meaningful promotion.
FIRE DAMAGES TWO RESIDENCES IN LA MESA
By Miriam Raftery, photos by Jake Christie February 2, 2014 (La Mesa) — Heartland Fire and Rescue, assisted by San Diego and Cal Fire crews, are working a residential duplex structure fire in the 4700 block of 4th Street in La Mesa. ECM photographer Jake Christie happened to be in the neighborhood when a fire began in a blue house around 3:30 p.m. and soon spread to an adjoining unit. “I saw no people, just smoke, then fire,” he said. “I may have been the first person to call in the fire.” The main body has been extinguished as of late this afternoon, but fire crews will be on scene for up to two more hours, fire officials indicate., so avoiding the area is advised. Red Cross has been summoned to assist displaced residents.