I grew up in the Midwest during the Great Depression. As was the case with most families, we were poor, but there was, nevertheless, a small upright piano in our living room. There were upright …
April 27, 1995
Thursday, April 27
David Burge enters local homes and businesses and tests pianos
Why penguins and roadrunners don't fly
Matthew: Why don't penguins fly? — Sarah Lopez, Euclid Elementary School Gee, we see penguins on the bus all the time. You’d think one day one of them would hop a plane just to see …
April 27, 1995
The difference between dark and golden raisins
Dear Matthew Alice: Munching on one of my favorite snacks, raisins, I noticed a nutritional difference between white seedless raisins and the regular ones. The white seedless raisins have 0.5gfat, 20mg sodium, 36g carbohydrates, and …
April 27, 1995
Thursday, April 20
Ishmael Reed describes MLA confab in San Diego
Last year, professor and poet Lorenzo Thomas of the University of Houston—Downtown informed me that two of my novels, Mumbo Jumbo and Reckless Eyeballing, would be subjects of a panel during the 110th annual convention …
April 20, 1995
How mosquito repellant works
Sefior Mateo: Back in Boy Scouts, we had this ongoing debate about why exactly bugs hated bug repellent. Some claimed it was the smell. Others claimed it was the taste. Still others that it created …
April 20, 1995
Quilts of Silence: Hands All Around, Courthouse Steps, Tumbling Blocks, Joseph's Coat
The names of quilts are like children’s games that are played with a loop of string: Feathered World without End, Hands All Around, Courthouse Steps, Tumbling Blocks, Joseph’s Coat. Some quilters, including Reggie, know the names at a glance.
April 20, 1995
Jack's island: jewel of Barrio Logan
Now painted a deep, electric blue-green with bright white trim, the shabby clapboard structure is partly uninhabitable and deserted, though a beauty parlor on the ground floor remains in business and pays its rent to the city.
April 20, 1995
Why some criminals are sentenced to a year and a day
Hello, Straight: I'd like you to find a legal reference to what I think/believe/have been told. When a person is sentenced in the U.S. to be in jail for more than one year, automatically that …
April 20, 1995
Where zero came from
Oh, Great Enlightened One: Who, pray tell, invented the zero? I have heard, through the movie Stand and Deliver, that the Mayans invented it. Several engineers I work with claim that the zero is Arabic. …
April 20, 1995
Nico – girl in the mind garden
A little-known fact: Jackson Browne was once a member of the Velvet Underground. Not really. But not far off. I have a correspondent in Tokyo, a magazine editor, who tells me that the current crop …
April 20, 1995
Thursday, April 13
Why Kate Sessions, the Mother of Balboa Park, Is the mother of us all
Aller traced Kate’s early palms (including those on Horton Plaza, Sixth Avenue, and Orange Avenue in Coronado) to seeds acquired by a nurseryman from a South African conservatory 40 years earlier. That would have dated them to 1892.
April 13, 1995
Explosives planted in the Coronado bridge
Dear Matthew Alice: When I was serving a sentence in the Navy in the ’70s, there was a salty rumor floating around that I accepted as gospel. First: The Coronado bridge is designed to float …
April 13, 1995
The sound of a lonely tree falling
Dear Matthew Alice: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? Some say yes. Some say no. What is behind the question? — …
April 13, 1995
Why humans cook their meat
Dear Matthew Alice: How come carnivorous animals can eat raw meat but we humans must cook it or else we get sick? Did we invent fire so long ago that we have biologically come to …
April 13, 1995
Easter bunny-making is now almost entirely automated and computer controlled
“What’s developed since, are ‘personality bunnies,’ items as Willy Wacket, a hollow bunny with a tennis ball and tennis racket. There’s Dapper Dan, a hollow milk chocolate fellow who wears a pink candy top hat.”
April 13, 1995
Thursday, April 6
San Diego pick-up basketball - heroes, courts, legends
San Diego is one of the only basketball meccas where beach sand tracked onto the court is part of the game. At South Mission or Crown Point or in North County at Pillbox or Glen Park up in Cardiff.
April 6, 1995
Al Young: How magic inspired my poetry
Crazy-quilt patches of somber and giddy sound formed the literal fabric of my tender world. I grew up in homes where the verbal jam session was a floating and usually festive fixture. Clusters of people …
April 6, 1995
Ted Leitner dismisses Padres replacements as scabs
On day 193 of the major-league baseball strike, we were five rows behind the Padres dugout in the seats my friend Anna had struggled to reserve. Anna lives in Scottsdale. One Saturday, she set out …
A tunnel from San Diego to other side of the earth
Hey, Matt... Suppose for a moment Earth’s core isn’t composed of molten lava. Now suppose that a tunnel was bored straight through, beginning here in San Diego, and out the other side of the planet. …
April 6, 1995
Giving someone the raspberries
Dear Matt: Where do we get the expression to give someone the raspberries? Or why is that razzing sound called raspberries? — Not My Real Name, San Diego Best I can piece this together, we …
April 6, 1995
The only kid at Lemon Grove Middle School who listened to Danzig
Grunge replaced Goth as the year’s passing fashion fad, and soon she was wearing ripped jeans and flannel shirts to school, apparently no more acceptable to the peer groupies than black velvet and wan looks.
April 6, 1995
Get lost in UCSD's Stuart Collection
When I taught creative writing at UCSD, I was impressed by the adventurous sculpture sited around campus — The Stuart Collection. Since campuses are gardens, these sculptures are garden sculptures, animating and conferring scale on …
April 6, 1995