Remember her?

 

          Good evening, 919 Gang.

 

CHRIS COOK writes:

Going a step further on your mentions of the 1978 PSA crash in San Diego: One of the terrible tragedies of that one was in our Union newsroom. The PSA plane hit a corner of North Park and obliterated the home of a wonderful woman who worked in the Union newsroom, whose name I’m embarrassed to say I have now forgotten. Yet I can still see her smiling face nearly five decades later. Can anybody help on a name here?

 

MARIA PUENTE writes:

I thought the same thing as Carl Larsen when I heard the acronym PSA in the string of names for the jet that went down in the Potomac after an Army Blackhawk collided with it on landing approach to DCA on Wednesday night. We locals who find DCA convenient yet often terrifying immediately thought of Air Florida in January 1982, when a jet taking off hit one of the river bridges due to failure to fully de-ice. Only a handful survived.

But all the reporting plus tower communications clips and transcripts kept referring to Wednesday's jet by different names and acronyms: American Eagle. American Airlines. Canadair. CRJ. PAT. And PSA. I was stunned - and confused. I thought PSA disappeared eventually after that horror crash in SD in September 1978 just before I got to the Tribune, which won a Pulitzer for its breaking news coverage of the crash.

 The similarities were striking. Flight 182 went down in Normal Heights, killing all, plus people on the ground, after a training pilot in a small plane collided with the jet on approach to Lindbergh Field - another tricky, congested waterfront airport surrounded my military bases (and since re-named apparently).

But airlines don't really disappear; they're just gobbled up by other, bigger airlines over a half century of deregulation churn in the industry. Too bad the physical churn in these air spaces hasn't been better regulated in that time. (It's unlikely the cause of this collision was due to Biden, Obama or DEI, contrary to claims.) But hearing and reading "PSA" made this tragedy even more horrifying for me, a regular user of DCA along with my family. It might even persuade me to switch to inconvenient Dulles. As far as I know, San Diegans still have no alternative to Lindbergh, and landing approach remains the same.

 

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          MOLLY BOWMAN STYLES writes:

I thought this unsettling news would be of interest to 919 members.

'Pretty Sh*tty': Doctor Says LA Times Disingenuously Spun His RFK Jr. Op-Ed - Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org/news/la-times-rfk-jr

 

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JOHN KERN writes:

          I want to second what Rosemary Eng says about shingles vaccine. I had a note to. myself for months to renew mine -- the old single shot one. I did not and then had minor surgery and apparently had what the doctor called "surgical stress shingles." Started in my lower back and went down the L5 in my left leg. I have permanent nerve damage in that leg and my gait is, shall we say, a little shaky. Get that vaccine! PS. I had the same reaction she did -- sore arm and that's it.

 

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          REBER: We kick off February by wishing Jan Rife and Arline Smith Happy Birthdays on Feb. 1.

 

919 at sea

 

          Good evening, 919 Gang.

 

CARL LARSEN writes:

Sharon and I had dinner Thursday with 919er Kathy and Steve Rodondi, whom we ran into on our roundtrip cruise to Hawaii.

Kathy and Steve Rodondi are at left.

 

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ROSEMARY ENG writes:

A little late with this but I want to make an addition to the vaccination thread.

Don't forget the shingles vaccine. I put it off for a long time until a good friend came down with shingles and took a photograph of her back. She looked like a leper, her skin all raw. The shingles got into her spine and she was in pain for months and months and couldn't sleep. I had the old one-shot shingles vaccine but after seeing her I ran to get the new two-part vaccine. Some say they had bad after effects but I only had a sore arm. My friend looked absolutely revolting and worse was the misery of ongoing pain. I think I got the shot at Costco pharmacy.

 

REBER: A shot you don’t hear much about is for pneumonia. No doctor ever mentioned that shot to me until the time when I came down with pneumonia.

 

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          BARRY BLOOM writes:

AP no longer has a staff sports reporter in San Diego now that Bernie Wilson has retired. Not sure if they plan to use stringers to cover the Padres, either.

 

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CARL LARSEN writes:

A chilling connection to San Diego from the Potomac midair crash: The regional aircraft that crashed with an Army helicopter was operated by PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines that traces its lineage to the former San Diego airline absorbed by USAIr, and then American.

San Diego’s PSA was haunted by a similar midair crash involving pilot training in a small plane that collided with a PSA 727 over San Diego.

Much of this is outlined in Wikipedia.

 

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REBER: We close the month by wishing Nancee Lewis a very Happy Birthday on Jan. 31.

Walnut ketchup

 

Good evening, 919 Gang. It occurred to me today that what our publication lacks is a food section. To correct that deficiency, I offer this recipe for walnut ketchup. Reportedly, it is from an 1884 English cookbook:

Take half a bushel of green walnuts, before the shell is formed, and grind them in a crab-mill, or beat them in a marble mortar. Squeeze out the juice, through a coarse cloth, wringing the cloth well to get out all the juice, and to every gallon put a quart of wine, a quarter of a pound of anchovies, the same quantity of bay salt, one ounce of allspice, half an ounce of cloves, two ounces of long pepper, half an ounce of mace, a little ginger, and horseradish, cut in slices.

The recipe then tells the reader to boil the mixture down and bottle it for at least three months. I would be tempted to leave it bottled a lot longer than that.

 

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KEN STONE writes:

Tuesday night, my wife, Chris, shot the SDSU men's basketball game, a stunning 21-point comeback victory over visiting San Jose State. Veijas Arena was going bonkers amid the best Aztecs comeback since 2017.

          So what was the AP lede?

"SAN DIEGO (AP) — Magoon Gwath's 24 points helped San Diego State defeat San Jose State 71-68 on Tuesday night."

Of course, AP often moves a write-thru with quotes. But that didn't come. I guess that's because no human AP reporter attended the game.

We learn from a post:

https://apnews.com/sports/san-jose-san-diego-state-aztecs-san-jose-state-spartans-college-basketball-miles-byrd-95dd18be7dc64044b6e88a55e7a03f35

"The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar."

In other words, a machine wrote the story.

I realize the barn emptied long ago, but it's still a shock to see AP covering a recent Final Four team via AI.

Here's how Times of San Diego covered the game, bylined by former U-T scribe Luis Monteagudo Jr.

He was there.

https://timesofsandiego.com/sports/2025/01/28/late-13-0-run-caps-frantic-san-diego-state-comeback-in-71-68-win-over-san-jose-state/