Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

kstaff

Subscribe


Entries

Community Blog

On the Boardwalk

·

American Airlines began direct service from San Diego to Miami in June, and I took advantage of it at the beginning of August for one of my periodic visits there. The Beatles tune aside, there is no airport in Miami …

Community Blog

The Brainless Summer

·

By the beginning of June, classes were over at the two colleges where I teach part time; one was actually over a bit before that. For many years I taught summer sessions in the evening at one of them. This …

Community Blog

Nothing Really Big Ever Happened Here

·

As a graduate student in linguistics at SDSU in the spring of 1982, the guest speaker at our spring colloquium was Joseph Greenberg, a noted specialist in language universals and language typology. Like many such specialists, he had a particular …

Community Blog

Pine Cone Hand Grenades

·

Our condominium complex on University Avenue truly looked like hell a year ago. It was never the most upscale of places anyway, but the real problem is that we live within our means, discuss priorities, and actually plan out our …

Community Blog

Valentine's Day? Bah! Humbug!

·

Just noticed from an online photo that you can still get those little heart-shaped candies with the lame messages on them. They taste kind of like Pepto Bismal tablets, and back in the '60s at Henry Clay Elementary School--my Alma …

Community Blog

Superior, and the Magic Triangle

·

More out of habit than anything else, I set out each year a few days after Christmas for a week or so's travel in Arizona. There are rental properties in Yuma and Prescott to check up on, but it's so …

Community Blog

Christmas of '87

·

The Ghost of Christmas Past drags a broken chain and carries a spotty record in my lifetime of memories. Mom put it well in a letter a few weeks before I left Germany in December 1979 after three years there …

Community Blog

Auld Acquaintance

·

Like just about anyone active in the San Diego workforce at midcentury, my mom worked for a time at Convair. She was a secretary there for I don't know how long, and told me toward the end of her life …

Community Blog

The Cuban Crisis

·

It wasn't until some years later that the name for this experience my childhood pals and I lived through would have the word "missile" inserted into the middle of it, and become the iconic "Cuban Missile Crisis." It was shortly …

Community Blog

Happenings Four Decades Time Ago

·

The German language is often almost cute in its simple logic. Decade is Jahrzehn or "year-ten" and century is "year-hundred." A thimble is a "finger-hat," a racoon is a "wash-bear," and a telephone is a "far-talker." Now I'm at the …

Community Blog

The Cookie Jar

·

There exists only one psychological/semantic image in my mind for a cookie jar. I'm not even sure what any other cookie jar would look like, as none of my siblings or I have ever owned one. For us, a cookie …

Community Blog

Mustard Flowers and Licorice Plants

·

They aren't exactly Incense and Peppermints. They're the smell of wetlands, circa San Diego County, and they evoke a strong reaction in me. They grew along the open drainage ditch behind our house on College Avenue when I was a …

Community Blog

Davy Jones

·

On the last day of last month, on the other side of the continent from our San Diego, not far from the Atlantic coast of our nation's only tropical mainland state, an older middle-aged man was encountered in his car, …

Community Blog

The Kid Who Cried

·

For the past fourteen years, I've complained about the commute from the SDSU area to the community college in North County where I teach part time. Everything else about the job is alright, though, and I've developed a routine that …

Community Blog

Only in the '70s Were the '60s Uncool

·

Every October I go to a regional conference where, usually just that one time a year, I see people I don't see any other time. My thesis advisor from graduate school days is almost always there. Sometimes I talk to …

Community Blog

Toot a Hollow Horn

·

Hear in your head the sweet, mournful ending to just about any romantic song; Los Lobos' interpretation of "Goodnight My Love" with its alto sax fadeout comes to mind. Think of autumn, with the start of school and the end …

Community Blog

Dad

·

The house sits quietly, looking like it always did. Occasionally the wind chime in the backyard sounds. I go there a lot, so that it won't seem abandoned. I do most of the work related to the estate there; don't …

Community Blog

Alone in the Wide Wide World

·

My dad passed on last Tuesday, June 21st, following mom by a month short of five years. He was 90 and had lived a good life, almost exactly half of it in the family house in Rolando that we'd moved …

Community Blog

The Rain Dance

·

It was called Easter Vacation in those days. Though I can't recall the year, I know it was one of those early sixties Easter Weeks when JFK was in the White House. I was just a bit of a kid …

Community Blog

At The Fair

·

There's nothing special about street fairs, really. I've been to neighborhood festivals and such in different countries, and they're all--on the surface level, anyway--pretty much the same. A bunch of vendors hoping to make some money set up booths under …

Archive by year

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader