The local chapter of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children doesn’t focus on closure. Its members don’t encourage forgiveness or say everything is going to be all right.
Instead, the group’s members seek peace, or something close to it, through the release of emotion: “We let them just be. We let them speak and cry and scream — whatever they feel.”
In this week’s Q&A feature, we talk to the chapter’s president, whose teenage son died in 2004, about the group and her own search for a way to go on. “We have so much emotion in us, and we don’t shut that off. That’s what I tell people,” she says. “Try to keep yourself open. Try to love and still be hurt because that’s what life is.”
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In Other News:
• Yesterday, we told you the Chargers could spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to lift the TV blackout of Sunday’s game. They won’t. But you have options: We list the ways (sneaky and otherwise) that you can watch the Bolts game live without needing to cough up a bundle for a ticket.
• The head of a business leader task force (and the incoming chairman of the Chamber of Commerce) says that without quicker reform, Prop. D won’t solve the city’s budget trouble.
• In arts, San Diego’s very own Grinch — whom we profiled on the job last year — will be back, once again, to be a mean one on stage.
• Also in arts, we compile the best things to do this weekend if you don’t plan to sit at home pouting about the Chargers game.
Elsewhere:
• CityBeat explores a popular Mexican sport that’s getting a foothold here but may fall afoul of animal-cruelty laws. It may remind Americans of rodeos and is “perhaps the closest one can get to the Roman Coliseum in the United States.”
I’ll stick with reruns of Ben-Hur.
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What We Learned This Week:
‘The Mayor’s Son of a Bitch’: If you’re a news junkie, you can probably name the White House chief of staff, the guy who’s about to head home. But do you know the name of the San Diego mayor’s chief of staff? Odds are you don’t, and that’s fine with her: Kris Michell may be the second most powerful person in city politics, but she keeps out of the public spotlight.
That is, until now: Our story takes a look at an influential woman who has played a major role in turning San Diego, for better or worse, into the city it is today.
Unique Cops on Chopping Block: San Diego schools may sack their police force, whose job is to offer specialized law enforcement services to campuses.
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The Coffee Collection (stories to savor over a latte macchiato):
Selling Out(doors): Street vendors in a San Diego neighborhood have run amok, at least according to merchants who bother to get permits and don’t appreciate the illegal competition. But will the city do anything about the problem?
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Quote of the Week: “I kept thinking, ‘He’s going to get up now. The play is done, he’ll get up now.’ I just thought, ‘Well, surely I didn’t really just watch someone die deliberately.’” — Journalist Lorie Hearn, who watched a convicted killer from San Diego die in California’s gas chamber in 1992.
Please contact Randy Dotinga directly at randydotinga@gmail.comand follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.