Thirty Years Ago WEEKEND NATURE LOVER, Cuyamacas, deserts, etc. Seeks paying passengers to diminish car expenses. At destination we split. Come return time, my Magic Bug will be there. Mike 222-8557.

DRIVING TO PHOENIX for Thanksgiving. Leaving SD on 23rd, returning late 27th. Plenty of room for kids, dogs, etc. Judi 224-7418.

AZTEC FAN wants ride to San Jose State game. Will share. Fred 287-5038. -- CLASSIFIEDS, November 17, 1977

Twenty-Five Years Ago My fear that she wouldn't have the abortion played on me. "Even if it is alive, you don't need to feel guilty," I said. "We're not under Christian law and you can still have the

abortion." "Something inside me is alive and part of me and I'm nurturing what could be our child, and you try to divorce yourself from what's happening by calling what's inside me an it. You're so unfeeling of what I feel. Anyway, just because I think abortion is some kind of murder, and I feel maternal, that

doesn't mean I'm anything close to a Christian. Now, will you please turn off the lamp? And let's go to sleep." -- "ONE WOMAN, ONE MAN, NO BABY," David Steinman, November 18, 1982

Twenty Years Ago "This is a historic occasion," began Tanja Winter of Friends of Nicaraguan Culture. "Sometimes I wonder if this is really San Diego." She looked out at 800 people crammed into USD's Camino Theatre on November 14 to hear an address by Daniel Sheehan. "This is a tribute to peace activists in San Diego." The audience applauded itself. Winter compared local activists to Benjamin Under, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and the Plowshares Eight, and she emphasized that "there is no such thing as humanitarian aid to the contras -- all aid to mercenaries is military aid." -- CITY LIGHTS: "ADDRESS," Karl Keating, November 19, 1987

Fifteen Years Ago Don't plunge into bookstore or library and seize the first pretty cover. You don't want someone about whom too much has been written. You don't want to be overwhelmed. Right off, eschew the more popular U.S. presidents. Likewise, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Henry James. You want also to sidestep suicides. Thus the poet Sylvia Plath, who ended her life by sticking her head in the oven; or the poet Anne Sexton, who took too many pills; and the poet Hart Crane, who jumped ship between Havana and New York; or Hemingway or Vachel Lindsay (whose last drink was Lysol). -- "WHEN ANY OLD BOOK WON'T DO, FIND ANOTHER LIFE TO LEAD," Judith Moore, November 19, 1992

Ten Years Ago Baby and Child Care by pediatrician Benjamin Spock occupies a rarefied position in publishing history. Only a handful of titles -- the Bible, Quotations from Mao Tse-tung, The Guinness Book of World Records, and a few others -- have been more successful.

The original 1946 book has changed a lot. Now it is changing one more time. Dr. Spock and his wife Mary Morgan moved to La Jolla last November, where they've been overseeing the preparation of a seventh edition to be published early next year. But the doctor is a very old man. He turned 94 in May, and Death is stalking him. -- "CHILDHOOD'S END," Jeannette De Wyze, November 20, 1997

Five Years Ago Early last week, when the nation was bickering about politics and the government was taking baby steps toward war, I called Father Abbot Charles at Prince of Peace Abbey in Oceanside. "In addition to chastity and obedience, we take a vow of poverty, and we live in community. I'm in no way disparaging diocesan priests when I say that when you become a diocesan priest, you tend to move up a little in the social scheme of things. Monks don't move up." -- SHEEP AND GOATS, Abe Opincar, November 14, 2002