Editor’s Note From Nextdoor….. “I just learned today that Knorr’s Candle Factory on Via de La Valle is closing 10/31/23 and they are having huge sale, including holiday decor, to cut inventory. It was always one of my favorite places to shop and such a local tradition. Please support them and stop by. Everyone loves beautiful candles!!” — Chari Chanin As the world, and…
Pala Store may be a hundred yards away from Pala Casino Spa & Resort, but it feels like a creature from another planet. It is, too, for this store lives in a parallel universe, both in space and time. At 3000 Pala Mission Road, the store that has served as focal point for nearly eight decades was, and remains, the only store from Pala at…
My days at the department store weren’t the most memorable, but a friend I knew briefly stands out, and the job had its moments. Who knows who makes these personnel decisions. Some genius at store management had the brilliant idea of assigning me, at first, to women’s shoes. It didn’t take long to realize that women, at least the ones who shopped at our store,…
The California Dream is a myth for many California Indian peoples and tribes. Since settlers arrived, California Indians’ reality has largely been one of land dispossession, cultural assimilation and even genocide. If California Indians were to design their own dream it would place decolonization at its core. Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, part of what I study as a scholar of Native American studies….
Every dog has its day, they say, and apparently so does every cause, effect and plain old thing. Welcome to Sunday Oct. 8, 2023. It’s National Fluffernutter Day. Correct, National Fluffernutter Day is observed annually on Oct. 8, according to the National Day Calendar. This is a day set aside each year to make, and enjoy, the savory sandwich consisting of peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. Fluffernutter dates…
In San Diego County, which had a population of 2,076 Japanese-Americans in 1940, families were sent to Poston, 12 miles south of Parker, Ariz. Poston was one of 10 internment camps created during World War II after an executive order authorized the Secretary of War to designate specific areas as military zones and excluded certain people from living in them. President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order…
Sept. 11, 2001: Local ironworker Paul Pursley spent 10 weeks at “Ground Zero” following the terrorist attack. His major complaint in the years following concerned his inability to get correct, and affordable, treatment due to the costs involved, costs that Congress finally agreed to add funding to the 9/11 First Responders fund almost 18 years later. “Ironworkers worked every day,” Pursley said. “We went on 12-hour shifts…
Sept. 10, 2001 was pretty much like any other day. That is to say honored only in its passing, don’t remember what happened. Sept. 11, 2001, as we all know, was a day seared in our personal and national memories like few others. Don’t know when the carnage began, but at my Del Dios home phones started ringing way too early in the morning and…
(Editor’s Note: Originally published Sept. 22, 2001 in the North County Times…) Clown came to town. He was talking peace by the freeway as others spoke of war. “I’m mainly out here for world peace,” said the thin, wispy-bearded 22-year-old who blew in from a Sonoma organic farm to visit his “girl,” and child in Ramona. In case you missed Clown — his nom d’pax…
It rained a lot this past winter. However, as we all know, that hasn’t always been the natural state for the arid San Diego region. It took Charles Hatfield to make it rain 107 years ago in San Diego. The only problem was he couldn’t make it stop. A deep dive through the San Diego Historical Society archives courtesy of the OB Rag reveals the…