According to Victor Gibeault, an environmental horticulturist and turf researcher at the University of California, Riverside, it’s a common experience among turf researchers to have had an epiphany about turf at some point in their …
May 18, 2026
Articles by Douglas Whyknott
Why grass matters in San Diego
A night at Palomar –all the stars within 25 light-years of earth
The Reader has started this series of its best stories from the past 52 years — 2600 cover stories and some remarkable interior features — to help make up for the loss of its physical …
January 19, 2026
General Grant's heirs made mark on San Diego
San Diego's least-remembered great man – U.S. Grant Jr. On a Sunday in September of 1929, 15 members of San Diego’s elite gathered to carry the coffin of an old friend. Among the pallbearers were …
August 26, 2023
The Fletchers leave a cautionary tale about alcohol
What happened? A pioneer family's tragedy There was nothing to do but walk back to the house. Eric and his wife walked 10 yards, 20 yards, 30. The sky was still pink in the west. …
August 21, 2023
Fled my father in La Jolla
La Jolla 1962 Dressed in long trousers and boat shoes and a white Lacoste tennis shirt, I accompanied Toby across Vista del Mar and Neptune Place to the Pump House and down concrete steps to …
August 19, 2023
Where did San Diego's fishing go?
Flipper victorious In 1960 San Diego was the most active tuna port in the world. The fleet consisted of about 135 boats. At any given time, 30 or 40 were tied up at the Embarcadero, …
March 5, 2023
San Diego's ostrich ranchers
Long-necked bonanza We had reached our first destination, about two miles due west of the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the semirural home of a pediatric dentist who’s been raising ostriches as a sideline for …
August 22, 2022
San Diego's bees and ostriches
The cumulative hiss of thousands of wings Mikolich moves bees to the Imperial Valley, for melon pollination, onion seed pollination, and alfalfa seed pollination. Hives there are usually set under “shades,” shelters that protect them …
April 2, 2022
Army-Navy Academy, wine experts behind doors, castrated man's life
An unhampered look at Carlsbad's Army Navy Academy "Unlike the upper-school cadets, these boys will break down and cry, a lot. They don’t want other boys to see ’em cry, ’cause it’s not macho. But …
August 29, 2021