Good evening, 919 Gang. Mary's funeral
is scheduled for Jan. 12 at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church 537 E Street in
Ramona.
The
Rosary will be at 10 a.m. Funeral mass at 10:30. Burial will be immediately
afterwards at Nuevo Memory Gardens at 532 Ash Street.
I wish the funeral could have been
sooner, but nothing is working out these days. A dental bridge came loose, and
I lacerated a tooth. For the past four days I have had zero solid food and very
few liquids. Our water main broke Saturday. There has been no water to the
house in more than 48 hours.
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JOHN
MUNCIE writes:
Hannah
Hui-Wong and Brian Clark recently told us of parking lot adventures. I have to
weigh in. Mine happened in 1970. Many of the details are hazy, but not because
of their vintage. You’ll soon see why.
My
pal, Ron Kolb, and I drove from Riverside, where we were working at the
Press-Enterprise, to a rock concert at Anaheim Stadium. The Who headlined, with
opening acts Leon Russell, Blues Image, and John Sebastian. It was a hot June
day; everybody was dressed in next to nothing.
An
elevated stage had been set up around home plate. The crowd — around 30,000 —
was spread out mostly on the baseball field, not in the stands. Kolb and I
ended up in far left field before we found a place to hunker down. It was a
long way to the stage, and the sight lines weren’t good. But our position was,
well, fortuitous. Next to us on the outfield grass were two bearded,
long-haired guys (which could have described us, too) and a big black plastic
trash bag. That bag was filled with — as they said in the ’70s -- dope, weed,
Mary Jane, grass. Marijuana, in other words. These two guys spent most of the
afternoon rolling joints from their stash and handing them out to the crowd.
For free. And we were sitting right next to them.
As I
remember, The Who’s set involved nearly the entire “Tommy” rock opera and ended
in typical Who fashion with Peter Townsend smashing his guitar down on the
stage equipment. I think that was what I remember.
Then
it was time to leave. The two of us joined 30,000 other fans heading out to the
stadium parking lot. But where in the parking lot? We had no clue. In
fact, at that point, we didn’t have much clue about anything except that the
music had been beautiful, the setting sun was beautiful, life was beautiful,
and we were at one with the universe. We wandered around for nearly two hours
until the parking lot thinned out enough for us to spot Kolb's little sports
car. Somehow, we found our way out and our way back to Riverside. None of which
I remember. But we must have made it safely, because here I am, 50-plus years
later, alive to tell about it.
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KAREN
CLARK RISTINE writes:
In the
mid-1990s, when the newsroom underwent a significant re-organization, one of
the new positions created was Solutions Editor. The description intrigued me,
and I applied. Top editors, I believe, had heard about the trend in
community-oriented reporting/public journalism at a national conference of
newspaper editors. I was intrigued by the concept and applied.
I
believe it was Todd Merriman who offered me the new role and said: The bad news
is you have no staff; the good news is the entire newsroom is your staff.
Working with the talented journalists -- word and visual -- throughout the
newsroom to create Soultions journalism at the U-T is among the highlights of
my newspaper career. I am grateful to each person who helped craft both the
regular community solutions stories and the major Solutions projects. In 1999,
the U-T sent a team of us to learn about "civic-mapping" -- always a
misnomer for deep community research and reporting. I wanted to try to apply
what we had learned in that year, so I moved to other positions in the newsroom
to apply them ,and the late Ruth McKinnie Braun embraced the Solutions Editor
role. I left the newsroom in August of 2005 to attend graduate school in
theology. I did not hear much about Solutions journalism beyond our efforts at
the U-T. In 2020, though, I got a query from a journalism professor writing a
book about Solutions journalism. What I learned from him is that Solutions
journalism is a movement within journalism that, since 2013, has connected
through The Solutions Journalism Network. https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/
I
retired from ministry in June of 2023 and moved to Kansas City, Missouri.
Earlier this year, in an email from KCUR, a local public radio station, I began
seeing stories from their Solutions reporter. I recently had coffee with him
and heard the joys and challenges of his role. Apparently, there are now
"Four Pillars of Solutions Journalism" that help form and test the
viability of a Solutions story. As I read them, I feel as if we followed them
at The Union-Tribune.
Let me
say again how grateful I am to the reporters, editors, graphic artists and
photographers from every newsroom department who shared their talents in The
UT's Solutions coverage.
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STEVE
PROSINSKI writes:
A USA Today column on the new-stadium
shakedowns by the Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears prompts a question for
919 Gangsters in San Diego and a remembrance.
From
Nancy Armour’s USA Today column:
“No one is saying the Chiefs and Bears
don’t deserve first-class facilities. Or even saying they can’t have new or
newly renovated stadiums. If these teams want state-of-the-art playgrounds,
they should get them!
“But
they should be paying for them themselves. Every last cent of the costs for
construction and infrastructure.”
So, my
question: Do San Diegans miss the Chargers? (The Spanos family's stadium
shakedown failed and the team left for LA in 2017. I left town — and my great
job as senior editor for Business and Sports — way back in 2000.)
The remembrance: Oh, my, how Don
Bauder railed at the concept of public financing of stadiums for wealthy team
owners.
Don,
longtime Union and Union-Tribune business columnist, for decades was a vocal
opponent of public subsidies for pro sports teams. Don left the U-T in 2003,
wrote for the San Diego Reader for 15 years and retired in 2018. He died in
2024 at age 88.
In a 2013 interview in the Reader, Don
was in fine, outspoken form:
"So I took a job as financial
editor and columnist with the San Diego Union (later Union-Tribune),
and was able to chase financial bandits. But not the biggest ones. I got in
trouble when I saw the planned Padres and Chargers subsidies as scams on the
taxpayers. I thought billionaires should build their own stadiums, but the
newspaper, which got abundant advertising from its sports pages, didn’t see it
that way.
"I wasn’t fired, but was a skunk
at the garden party with management."
Vintage Bauder.
The
full Reader interview with Don:
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2024/jun/24/feature-san-diego-union-and-emsan-diego-readerem-writer-don-bauser-passes-away/
The
full USA Today column:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2025/12/22/kansas-city-chiefs-new-stadium-kansas-chicago-bears-new-stadium-indiana/87888211007/
REBER: I think virtually everyone
will agree with Don, that sports owners, not taxpayers should pay for stadiums.
It’s a very sensible idea. And totally unrealistic.
Can you picture a fat-cat owner
digging billions out of his wallet when taxpayers are standing by, eager to pay
the bill. Never happen.
Yes, Mary and I remained fervent Charger
fans when they moved to Los Angeles. Mary had two miscarriages, one very serious,
before our first child was born. When that son arrived, the doctor told Mary
she needed total rest; she should stay in bed for two weeks.
Well, the Chargers’ first game was
five days after the birth. Can you guess where Mary was sitting when that game
was played? Darn tootin’.
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BILL
CALLAHAN writes:
As a
Navy brat I was surrounded by Y’alls when my father was stationed in Pensacola,
Florida in the mid ‘50s. There was one available television channel then, from
a station in Mobile, Alabama. Every Saturday morning at 9 a.m. a music/Southern
variety show labeled “Y’all Come” was broadcast. I’ve never used the phrase.
However, every once a while a “youse guys” will slip out from when my father
was stationed in Brooklyn.
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TOM GABLE forwards:
The
NYT has a tragi-comic feature on the 52 best breakup lines of the year,
submitted by readers. Not rich or cute enough, no books at home, looks like an
older sister, the Bill Clinton excuse, and, of course, someone else.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/style/best-breakup-lines.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AlA.MLUe.UX0zk_5n0wAn&smid=url-share
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REBER: I appreciate
all the warm comments from readers. I am not printing them because I don’t want
this publication to drown in my tears, but I will print a few.
KEN
WILLIAMS writes:
Jack,
your post really touched me.
I've
heard your lament before. I was in college in 1974, listening to the latest
Elton John album, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," and his extraordinary
"Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" medley of two songs was
playing. The universe must have known what was going to happen next.
My telephone rang. It was the shocking
news that my maternal grandfather had died from a massive coronary at the age
of 61. Suddenly, that song took on a special meaning that triggers this somber
memory.
At the
funeral, my grandmother collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. She
essentially told us the same thing, that her life had lost its purpose because
the love of her life had passed away.
I was the first grandchild, so I had a
very close bond with my grandmother. After asking all the weeping relatives to
leave her hospital room, I grabbed her hand, and told her: "You have so
much to live for. You have five adult children who need you because they just
lost their father, and you have a bunch of grandchildren who really need you
and love you so much." Grandmother rallied, and truly embraced her role as
the matriarch of the family. She lived another 34 years to spread her love among
her growing family.
I believe you will find a new purpose
in life, Jack. A lot of loved ones in your family are counting on
you.
