THOMAS LARSON

(San Diego Reader July 12, 2001)

At the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, David Provost loads the Megan’s Law CD of California’s serious and high-risk sex offenders, all 86,000 of them—that is, all the convicted ones—into a computer. You (concerned parent, informed citizen) have requested to see the registry. You’ve brought in the names of a dozen Little League coaches, your ostensible purpose, and your real hope, to identify the man who lives down the street, whose hand you saw linger too long on the shoulder of your nine-year-old son. You have the man’s hair color and his approximate weight; your son mentioned a heart-shaped tattoo on his forearm, Cupid’s deviant. Though you don’t have the man’s name, you find the CD can be searched by Zip Code.

(San Diego Reader May 31, 2001)

Next week's runoff election in District 6 for the city council seat vacated by Valerie Stallings last January will close a match between first-time candidates Steve Danon—former chief of staff to Ron Roberts and frequent Republican campaign manager—and Donna Frye, a Pacific Beach environmentalist and founder of STOP, Surfers Tired of Pollution. Danon has accused Frye of courting "big labor's" endorsement, implying that out-of-town interests are directing her with money and more. For her part, Frye seldom brings up the identity of Danon's well-heeled donors.

(San Diego Reader April 12, 2001)

Valerie Stallings’ guilty plea in late January to two state misdemeanors for not reporting gifts from Padres owner John Moores resulted in the payment of a $10,000 fine and her resignation from the City Council. And yet the revelations of Moores’ four-year gift-bounty to Stallings have some San Diegans in disbelief—fuming, really—as to why Stallings took the fall and Moores was exonerated, and why neither were charged with a federal offense after being investigated by the FBI. From 1996 to 2000, Moores gave—airline tickets, baseball memorabilia, cash, use of car and vacation home, access to a Neon Systems stock IPO, miscellaneous items (the total value of things that remain in her possession has not been reported, though estimated at $10,000)—and Stallings received.

(San Diego Reader January 11, 2001)

I had only begun to follow the renowned grief specialist Dr. Ken Druck and the grief he bears for losing his 21-year-old daughter, Jenna, when he called one day to say he was with two dads he wanted me to meet because their kids, roughly the same age as his, had also died. He said if I aimed to tell the whole story of families and the horror of losing their children, there was no better way than to hear it from these men, who were "raw, brutally honest, and in constant pain." He emphasized men, because I'd be close to their psychology and, a father myself, I might "get" (understand) some of their sorrow.

Dr. Druck had "got" it, full-fathom. He had lost Jenna, whom he calls "the finest human being I have ever known," while she was studying abroad with Semester at Sea, a cruise-ship campus that voyages to various sites around the world. Beginning in the Bahamas, crossing the Atlantic to Africa, then on to the Far East, the ship docked in Madras, India. There she and a group of 55 students flew to New Delhi to take an overnight bus south into the mountains. Their destination: the Taj Mahal, the world's most beautiful monument to love.

(San Diego Reader December 7, 2000)

Last March California voters approved Proposition 21, the anti-juvenile crime initiative, by a gang-busting 62 percent. San Diegans passed the measure by a full two-thirds. To date it’s been a galvanizing nine months for local prosecutors, who are using the law to charge violent teenagers with new trial mandates and prison sentences. The main thrust of Prop 21 requires that juveniles, aged 14 to 17, who commit murder, sexual offenses, and gang-related violence, be tried in adult court. The law also permits teens to be tried as adults for robbery, arson, carjacking, and kidnaping, where the degree of violence is the determining factor. To allow district attorneys to decide the venue of the prosecution means bumping a convicted defendant up from the rehabilitation guarantees of a more lenient juvenile court to the harsher incarceration penalties of adult court. You do the adult crime, you do the adult time.

(San Diego Reader September 14, 2000)

Day-of-Air

Today at the East County Community Health Services clinic in El Cajon, Supervisor Dianne Jacob is holding a “newser,” an announcement directed at the media. Because Scripps East Hospital in El Cajon has recently closed, Jacob wants people to know Grossmont is the nearest hospital for emergencies. But she also wants people to use an emergency room only when it’s necessary. On this issue the public needs educating, a job some feel is not the bailiwick of elected officials. Not to worry. For Jacob and Jacob’s media-relations officer, the solution is a no-brainer: Stage a media event. Facing the cameras will be a line-up of doctors, patients, and emergency medical technicians, standing behind Jacob and supporting her speech at the portable amplified podium with a seal whose motto reads, “The noblest motive is the public good.”

(Southwest Art July 2000)

Many viewers regard William Glen Crooks’ crystalline landscapes of Southern California and neighborhood portraits of San Diego as nostalgic. The artist, however, disagrees. He sees his spare paintings, which feature the region’s glaring and diffused light, not as nostalgic but tragic. Crooks tries to paint what is essential for him about human life: the lingering of “loss and regret.” Whether collectors are aware of these emotions or not, they seem to be as moved by them as the artist is. His spring show at SOMA Gallery in La Jolla, California, featured some twenty-five paintings and nearly sold out.