Tag: politics

An early November walk in Balboa Park.

It’s November 9th. It’s still considered early November, right? In any event, I enjoyed a fun and very unique walk through Balboa Park today.

I found evidence Veterans Day is almost here–now just two days.

Before we know it, Thanksgiving and the Holiday Season will be here, too!

Enjoy some photos of interesting sights…

First up, the San Diego Potters’ Guild was having their Semiannual Patio Show in Spanish Village Art Center this weekend. While people watched, one guild artist was demonstrating the use of a potter’s wheel.

Next, some photos of the badly deteriorated Convair Sea Dart mounted in front of the San Diego Air and Space Museum.

Time is running out to see this very rare, experimental supersonic seaplane. It’s going to be replaced in front of the museum by an F-14A Tomcat fighter jet, as soon as the latter is restored at the museum’s annex near Gillespie Field.

The replacement won’t be just any ordinary F-14A, either. It will be the very plane used in the filming of Top Gun: Maverick!

Read an article about this coming change here.

Next, the free two o’clock Sunday concert at the Spreckel’s Organ Pavilion was a Veterans Day Celebration.

San Diego Civic Organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez played Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, various rousing John Philip Sousa marches, the United States Armed Forces Medley, and, yes, some good old Bach.

Toward the end of my walk, I stumbled upon something rather unique! A row of chess boards was set up in the Plaza de Panama, and a Chess Grandmaster, Two-Time National Champion was competing against multiple random people at one time!

I learned the Chess Grandmaster is also candidate Patrick Wolff, who is running for California Insurance Commissioner. His people were filming the proceedings for their campaign’s social media.

This is something you don’t see every day!

Chet, who plays guitar in Balboa Park, was causing the Grandmaster to pause and think a long while!

Lastly, I saw the Old Globe’s Dr. Seuss Christmas tree was getting ready for its annual lighting this evening. I didn’t have a reservation for the free event, however. Maybe next year…

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

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City of San Diego honors Constitution Week.

Kathleen Winchester holds City of San Diego Proclamation that recognizes and honors Constitution Week.

It’s Constitution Day and Citizenship Day!

Today is the 238th anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution of the United States. September 17th was the date in 1787 when delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the historic document in Philadelphia.

The City of San Diego has issued an official Proclamation that celebrates Constitution Week. I was fortunate to see it close up!

The City of San Diego Proclamation, signed by Mayor Todd Gloria, includes the following words:

…celebrating Constitution Week serves as an important reminder of the historic rights, privileges and responsibilities the Constitution affords us…

…Constitution Week commemorates the week the Constitution was signed and delivered to the Continental Congress. It laid the foundation for the birth of a new nation and became one of the most significant chapters in United States history…

…the Constitution lays out liberties like freedom, opportunity, and rule of law…

As a writer and individual who loves to create, I cherish freedom.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Students win statewide contest for Lemon Grove video!

During my recent visit to the Lemon Grove Historical Society’s newly renovated headquarters–the Parsonage Museum–I learned something extraordinary. Last year two high school students who attend Canyon Crest Academy, Sarah and William Gao, won a statewide contest for their outstanding video concerning the Lemon Grove Incident.

The contest had the theme Turning Points in History.

Their extremely well done documentary concerns the fight that led up to the landmark court order in 1931 that ended school segregation in Lemon Grove. View their excellent video on YouTube by clicking here.

This is such a great achievement that I thought it deserved additional recognition. Their video concerns history that everyone should know. Let’s run up the views, comments and likes on YouTube and give their video more traction!

The Lemon Grove Incident was the United States’ first successful school desegregation case. It was a pivotal event in our nation’s history. For the longest time I myself hadn’t known that.

Back in 2022 I took photographs of a mural in Lemon Grove that celebrates the Lemon Grove Incident and those who courageously fought for the victory against segregation. My first photograph above shows part of the mural. See the other photos here!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Presidents of the United States visit Balboa Park.

What do Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt have in common? These eight former, future and sitting presidents visited Balboa Park in San Diego!

A timely exhibit at the San Diego History Center celebrates the fact that our city’s crown jewel, Balboa Park, since its development for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, has acted as a magnet for United States Presidents.

The exhibit recalls how Woodrow Wilson’s speech at Balboa Stadium was the first time a president’s voice had been electronically amplified, and how FDR was the first person to ride in a car across Cabrillo Bridge.

While these different presidents might have disagreed on politics, it seems they agreed that Balboa Park was a special and very beautiful place.

Yesterday the 47th President of the United States was inaugurated. In the 21st century, how many more presidents will enjoy a visit to amazing Balboa Park?

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Thank you for sharing!

Votes For Women at San Diego History Center.

The Women’s Museum of California has made its home inside the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park. Visitors who walk into the history center can now view a museum exhibit concerning the struggle by women to obtain the right to vote in the United States.

Votes For Women: A Portrait of Persistence follows the efforts of suffragists to amend the U.S. Constitution and change state election laws by lobbying in their community and in the halls of Congress. As one display explains, the suffragists wrote articles, circulated petitions, gave speeches, organized marches, and were sometimes imprisoned for their protests. Over time these tactics won support for woman suffrage that led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Visitors will learn how the fight for women’s right to vote lasted more than 80 years. Even after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was required to eliminate the suppression of voting by women.

In addition to many interesting posters, there are garments on display that suffragists might have worn, including a bloomer costume, named for writer and women’s rights advocate Amelia Bloomer.

Kids can also enjoy fun activities. There’s a San Diego History Center image scavenger hunt and the opportunity to take selfies with a suffragist sash and protest signs!

After you check out the Votes For Woman exhibit, take a stroll around the rest of the San Diego History Center. There’s a lot of history to see!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

San Diego, a famous Logan, and Memorial Day.

The colorful new Barrio Logan gateway sign arches over Cesar Chavez Parkway.

Did you know two communities in San Diego are named after the person who is largely responsible for the Memorial Day holiday?

Logan Heights and Barrio Logan (which was originally part of Logan Heights), along with Logan Avenue, received their names from John A. Logan.

This article explains: In 1871, Congressman John A. Logan wrote legislation to provide federal land grants and subsidies for a transcontinental railroad ending in San Diego. A street laid in 1881 was named Logan Heights after him, and the name came to be applied to the general area.

John Alexander Logan according to Wikipedia was an American soldier and politician. He served in the Mexican–American War and was a general in the Union Army in the American Civil War . . . As the 3rd Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, he is regarded as the most important figure in the movement to recognize Memorial Day (originally known as Decoration Day) as an official holiday.

Read the Wikipedia article and you’ll see how one law he helped pass would today be considered repugnant.

I knew nothing about the connection of Logan to both San Diego and the Memorial Day holiday until yesterday, when it was spoken of during a Memorial Day weekend event in Balboa Park.

Interesting how human history, with its infinite complexity, can entangle so many different places, people, and conflicting ideas. It makes you wonder about our shared future. Can it possibly be known?

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Plaques honor heroes in La Jolla park.

During my walk last weekend through Ellen Browning Scripps Park in La Jolla, I paused to take photographs of two plaques. One is over a century old. The other was created much more recently.

Both plaques honor people who, in their own way, made the world better. Both are heroes.

The Abraham Lincoln Centennial Memorial, set inside a boulder, is dated February 12, 1909. It was placed by the people of La Jolla beside a flagpole that no longer exists. I found an article that concerns the placement of this plaque. Read it here.

The second plaque reads:

In honor of our beloved mother Selma Malk, who enjoyed this view from her home at the La Valencia Hotel for 31 years.

The plaque was recently placed between a newly renovated picnic area and the scenic boardwalk south of La Jolla Cove.

According to this article: Selma Malk lived for 32 years at La Jolla’s La Valencia Hotel and volunteered at the Birch Aquarium and Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park. She died in La Jolla in 2017 at age 103.

In the next photo, you can see the historic La Valencia Hotel.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Blue Door Bookstore exhibit at Central Library.

Readers who fondly remember the old Blue Door Bookstore in Hillcrest will enjoy viewing a new exhibit at the San Diego Central Library.

Several glass display cases contain photographs, store flyers, art, a newspaper clipping . . . even one of the bookstore’s bags with its image of an ugly, scrunched-up face!

The Blue Door Bookstore once stood in the heart of Hillcrest at 3823 Fifth Avenue. Founded in 1961 and first owned an operated by Bill and Mary Peccolo, the store was purchased in 1988 by retired high school English teach Tom Stoup. Working hard, he grew the business, doubling its clientele and inventory in just four years.

The Blue Door Bookstore would become a favorite destination in San Diego for lovers of literature, culture and progressive politics. It would host up to 80 authors a year at a series of Wednesday and Friday poetry and literature readings and book signings. New authors were included with those who had achieved international fame. In one of my photographs, you can see Tom Stoup standing next to Gore Vidal.

The store with its blue door would finally close in 2001, largely due to the advent of e-commerce.

The Blue Door Bookstore exhibit can be viewed on the San Diego Central Library’s First Floor, in the wide area in front of the building elevators.

Are you both a San Diego resident and lover of books? To one side of these display cases you’ll find shelves of books by local authors!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

The beautiful new Piazza Costanza in Little Italy.

On November 28, 2023, the new Piazza Costanza was dedicated in San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood. The public space, filled with inviting tables and umbrellas, honors Margaret “Midge” Costanza, a trailblazer who became the first woman to hold the title of Assistant to a United States President.

Costanza was a daughter of Sicilian immigrants. Her illustrious career included fighting for the cause of civil rights. In 1978 she moved to Southern California and eventually worked in the San Diego District Attorney’s office advocating for senior citizens.

The beautiful Piazza Costanza is located at the corner of Columbia Street and Ash Street. It features a bronze bust, historical photographs and several inspiring quotes.

I walked through the piazza late yesterday afternoon…

It is the link from the present to the past that gives us a spirit to address the future.

I will never apologize for allowing people to participate in a government they help select and that belongs to them.

Human dignity is a right, not a privilege, a right inherited at birth.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Famous Mexican cartoonist Rius exhibit during Comic-Con!

Eduardo del Rio was one of the most influential Mexican cartoonists of the 20th century. During Comic-Con 2023 an exhibit at Seaport Village celebrates the work of this important artist, who is more popularly known as Rius.

Anyone interested in the history and evolution of art–political cartoons in particular–should swing by to view RIUS Para Principiantes. You’ll see how Rius effectively created humorous small satires that called for social progress and attacked corruption in Mexico.

I was interested to learn Rius influenced another more contemporary Mexican cartoonist, Trino. An exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum earlier this year concerned Trino. I blogged about that here.

Where can you see this exhibition? Walk just beyond the Manchester Grand Hyatt into Seaport Village, then look for Casa Mexico. You’ll find it!

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I’m covering Comic-Con again this year. To see all my current and past blog posts concerning Comic-Con, click here and scroll down!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!