Wonder and Hope — Mom always convinced me it would be an adventure. By Ian Anderson The Animal Keeper— Animals spoke to my mother “in a language only she understood.” By Whitney Butler La Gringa …
May 6, 2015
News & Stories
Reader writers tell stories about Mom
From The Book of Kings
The tale is told that Rustam had at first Such strength bestowed by Him who giveth all That if he walked upon a rock his feet Would sink therein. Such puissance as that Proved an …
May 6, 2015
Robots punching monsters
I’ve picked a big, technically advanced, epic-style movie, which is Pacific Rim (USA, 2013, Warner Brothers). It serves up robots punching monsters! I don’t really know what else needs to be said. There is a …
May 6, 2015
Medical Marijuana, Inc., sued
The current owners of the country's first publicly traded medical marijuana business utilized fraud and deception to gain control of the company, a pair of former boardmembers claim in a lawsuit filed last week. According …
May 6, 2015
Eastlakers don't eat what the suits serve up
Chula Vista city councilmember Patricia Aguilar held a town-hall meeting on Monday, May 4, at the Hub inside Otay Ranch Town Center. She wanted to hear public comments about the proposal by developer Baldwin & …
May 6, 2015
Reason to Rebel finds a reason to challenge
Although it is advertised as a Reason to Rebel record release, Saturday’s Casbah show will not have any new vinyl pressings for sale. “We were going to release a split seven-inch with [L.A.’s] Mothers Anger,” …
May 6, 2015
Two Lake poems
A Midnight Dawn When tinkling glass Rang in my ear, I walked the hall Where Chanticleer Had crowed up dawn With crackling mirth, Red feathers flashing From his perch, While from the breach In the …
May 6, 2015
Where score is central to movie plot
Blue is the first film in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy. Blue explores the life of a widowed composer trapped by the legacy of her husband. The story unfolds as the main character attempts to …
May 6, 2015
Have a holly-jolly summertime
Dear Hipster: I like to play my Christmas-themed Pandora station every six weeks or so, even if it isn’t Christmastime. I think it’s funny to listen to Burl Ives in July. My friends don’t agree. …
May 6, 2015
Get hot at Pho Hoa
I take a chunk of meat, collect some noodles and bean sprouts, and shove them in my maw.
May 6, 2015
Pyrate Punx slam for autism
“Yes, it’s gone. I hear it’s going to be a shoe factory.” Erik Reed was proud of the shows he promoted at the Stronghold, the Barrio Logan art collective and music venue that has hosted …
May 6, 2015
Boomtown lobbyist
Eight children were wounded, a principal and a custodian died, and Bob Geldof got a song out of it. Now the site of San Diego’s former Cleveland Elementary school is drawing the attention of a …
May 6, 2015
Bomb shelter shoegaze
An aural collection of every kind of shoegaze/dream pop you’ve ever heard, but with a hard left turn. Vaadat Charigim is the name of a band from Tel-Aviv, a trio consisting of guitarist/vocalist Yuval Haring, …
May 6, 2015
A reason to make Far from the Madding Crowd
Matthew Lickona: There are those who say that when a film is set in the past, it’s in order to comment on the present. Was there a particular reason to make this film now? Thomas …
May 6, 2015
Stunning visuals and skilled storytelling
The Fall, directed by Tarsem, is an undiscovered gem. Set in a hospital in the 1920s, an injured stuntman forms a friendship with an immigrant girl. He begins to tell her an epic story. Yet, …
May 6, 2015
G-Eazy, or not
On the morning that SDSU sophomore Tyler Kistler talks to the Reader, 210 of 600 tickets have so far been sold to satisfy Kistler’s end of a deal to have the rapper G-Eazy perform a …
May 6, 2015
On the trampoline scene in a big way
“We turn off the main lights and turn on black lights, party lights, and fog machines.”
May 6, 2015
"Lean on Me," in creole
Some high-school students might spend their summer vacationing in Mexico. Not Max Oestreicher. The 17-year-old plans to spend his vacation in Haiti. For the second year in a row. Oestreicher, who lives in La Mesa …
May 6, 2015
City-council Democrats hitting the road
San Diego’s city hall has been a point of departure for lots of local politicos of late, most famously Republican mayor Kevin Faulconer, who has gone to the East Coast and back several times and …
May 6, 2015
Garden party potentate
“How do you plan to police this? Is this all honor system?” Bill nodded. “Those are my two favorite words,” I said. Bill smirked at me. “Because to you, ‘honor system’ means the same as ‘sucker system’?”
May 6, 2015
Gangsterland
Last March — and with one foot out the door to catch a screening of The Gunman — a call comes in from Reading Cinema’s Jo Brantferger. They’re opening something in two months called Black …
May 6, 2015
Water? In the desert? Yup.
Sheep Canyon has one of the larger streams flowing east out of the San Ysidro Mountains. Its bubbling waters cascade over boulders and down waterfalls into clear pools, and its banks are lined with shady …
May 6, 2015
See the suicidal from their pinhole shaft of light
Suicide is the Result of Severe Brain Dis-ease: The Brain is Diseased, Dis-eased The last two weeks have brought five suicides to my attention. Not my personal loved ones, but people and families that are …
May 6, 2015
Hip-ocrisy or versatility?
Hello Mr. Hipster: I am not very big on hipster culture, but I do know that hipsters tend to act very anti-corporation. I live in South Park, and the whole area is fighting Target from …
May 6, 2015
Open-door Airbnb in Burlingame
Rachel Smith purchased her Burlingame home in 2007 after receiving an inheritance. The 70-year-old retired high school teacher fell in love with the five-bedroom three-bath, 2996-square-foot historical Craftsman home built in 1912. It was more …
May 6, 2015
The Animal Keeper
There was never a time animals didn’t roam free inside my childhood home — ruining the carpet, pissing off my dad, running to my mom for handouts from the kitchen counter. Each meal she prepared …
May 6, 2015
For the love of dog
The Author Responds Thank you everyone, angry, agreeing, or otherwise, for this incredible response to the April 23 cover story, “You Love Me Now, but Will You When I’m Four?” I have learned a lot. …
May 6, 2015
Shuffle your feet
I felt a pain in my right foot. It felt as if I had made contact with a piece of broken glass. I noticed a slightly bleeding wound. Within minutes, an excruciating feeling crept up …
May 6, 2015
We didn’t understand her exhaustion
My mother doesn’t get as much space in my early memories as does my dad. She worked during the day and went to school at night for years that felt like decades in my little …
May 6, 2015
Wanted for cash: SDSU drop-outs
They don’t know it yet, but thousands who graduated from San Diego State University are regarded by campus fundraisers as “lost.” To hit up the missing, the school has been combing through “thousands of digital …
May 6, 2015
Tuna have found U.S. waters
Still quite the bump out there for the queasy. Bet Dramamine sales are up. That said, the guys that are getting out on private boats and kayaks are getting a few more yellowtail and occasional …
May 6, 2015
La Gringa Jodida
My mother was born Jody Ann Teschner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on July 9, 1957, and raised in the suburbs. I don’t know much about my grandparents, except that my grandfather fought as a lieutenant colonel …
May 6, 2015
The otherness that burdened my mother
My mother first stepped foot in America in 1957 at the age of six. She was porcelain-skinned and freckle-faced with a shock of curly red hair. My grandfather waited on the tarmac as his family …
May 6, 2015
We Complain. She Listens.
My mom walks funny. It’s not a physical problem. It’s a mindset. There’s pride in her steps. She walks strongly. She walks as if she is the first line of defense in case of ambush. …
May 6, 2015
Unique challenges yield unique triumphs
I’m proud to be the Y-chromosome-equipped period at the end of a long line of strong, self-sufficient women. My great grandmother, Viola, not only raised her own produce and livestock in the far-flung rural expanses …
May 6, 2015
I could lose you forever
When I am an old woman who repeats the same stories over and over again, the one I will tell of my mother will not be about the bread she baked some Saturday mornings, or …
May 6, 2015