From the Archives
I’m Morgan, He’s Cronkite Scholars, particularly Vjaceslav Vsevolodovic Ivanov, director of the Section on Structural Typology of the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Walter Leland Cronkite Studies at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in St. …
A Fairy Godmother’s Art I can recall the way a certain blouse, puffy-sleeved and lace-collared, tugged at the pits of my arms the year I fell in love with Matt Denhalter. The same mistakes I …
Memories of Main Street “Sometimes I would see kids my age, girls with makeup and clothes like girls I’d see on American Bandstand. I’d stare at and study them and when we got home they’d …
Break a Leg In 1993, Hal Holbrook was performing King Lear in the title role. Tom Hall, a San Diego actor, likes to tell the story. Hal came on too soon and started a completely …
Murder in Mission Valley There was a history of immigrants to the area penning Indians up in reservations after throwing them off Mission lands. Indians tried to regain their lands, but they were often unable …
Show Me Your Saphenous Vein, James! I had wanted to be a doctor since graduating from elementary school; I never seriously considered anything else. I did not have any doctor role models in my immediate …
San Diego Grand There are several grand pianos in San Diego County that are more than 100 years old. I visited Mrs. Paul Ringler to examine and play her 1883 Steinway “B.” Mrs. Ringler, now …
Dear Dick: The San Diego Union, Evening Tribune, and Nixon: A Romance in Letters Nixon to Copley: “The ride down and back in your spic-and-span new plane, the superb dinner which you hosted jointly with …
Depression Letters “He had been working since May at Balboa Park, cutting wood, gardening, cleaning up ravines, canyons, etc. When he was put on the Federal work card, a foreman's name was on the card. …
John Brizzolara wrote for the Reader from 1989 to 2013, including a weekly column, TGIF. John died in his sleep at Father Joe’s Villages on October 11, 2016. He was 65. John Brizzolara’s Last Column …
Pancho Villa’s head — the story behind its disappearing One of Pancho Villa’s sons, 21-year-old Pancho Augustin Villa, had just been declared “violently insane” by an L.A. judge and was confined to a psychiatric hospital. …
I am my own queen "Once, a guy, a drunk guy took my taxi from downtown. He wanted to go to this particular colonia, this neighborhood. It was raining, I remember. When I got there, …
Save the songbirds! Of 9000-plus bird species, 6000 are in decline, 1000 heading for extinction. Urban Wisconsin has 1295 free-roaming cats per square mile. Cats kill 1 to 3 million birds each day in the …
Nightmare of the New Hope A little cry of relief burst from him, lost in the shriek of the wind. His hands scrambled, searching for the inflate cord. The sea bounced him. Spray lashed the …
The Frontier They Want Us to Forget By the late 1960s, the only Frontier structures that still remained were two war-era public schools, Barnard Elementary and the Midway Continuation High School. The city council had …
Whitman's Samplers vs. See's An unmarked lid allows Mrs. See and her customers to free-associate, sweets-wise, and put whatever they like into a box. If this idea seems frivolous or frightening, here’s another solution. Make …